


Water Me

by CyborgShepard



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/F, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Moira has Feelings, Power Bottom!Angela, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-04-18 18:45:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14219427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyborgShepard/pseuds/CyborgShepard
Summary: But then Moira had told her, "Biology's habits are hard to break."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For toastweasel, who listened to me moan about this fic for months, and still cheered me on <3
> 
>  
> 
> Edit: now with a [translation](http://imennki.lofter.com/post/1d481722_eeb4af3b) into Chinese!

Moira’s hands are shaking.

A slight tremor, indiscernible if Angela wasn’t invested in watching the way Moira’s delicately reassembling Reyes’ left shoulder blade. It’s barely a shiver, but it’s noticeable, rippling across her fingers and causing her wrist to twitch just so. Angela chances a look up at her, her tweezers slowly prying a chunk of shrapnel from Reyes’ bone. Like her, Moira’s hair is covered with a paper cap, but her glasses sit low on her nose, and the tops of her cheeks are flushed and shiny.

How strange. Moira’s sweating, too.

“Switch out,” calls Angela, muffled behind the mask. She catches Moira’s eyes narrow, but refuses to wither beneath her hot glare.

Around them the monitors are beeping, and the nurses are scuffling silently as they clean Moira’s bloodied tools and check all the vein-like tubes running into Reyes’ right arm. They keep their heads bowed, never even daring to look up. Moira sniffs, ignoring them, and pointedly ignoring her.

Frustration is a spike in the chest, indignation stiffens her jaw, but during surgery Angela would never contest her. They’ve been crowded over Reyes’ broken body for nearly three hours, carefully undoing an errant Bastion unit’s skillful work of completely ripping him from kidney to clavicle. Neither of them have slept more than twelve hours in five days, and the world outside is wispy, the empty streets lined with broken cobble and the shadows filled with smoke. Neither of them are up to the fight.

So Angela lets it go. She works the bullet free, and drops it with its hundreds of tiny shattered brothers in a steel dish, and doesn’t look up again.

“Ready a biopod,” she calls to no one in particular, but a dozen people respond. She’s vaguely aware of Jack’s presence over in the corner of the room, where he shouldn’t loom, but has the clearance to. He isn’t watching _them,_ which is a relief, but on second thought maybe it would be better, less repercussions and snapping over he comms, if he were. As long as Angela could be sure he was too far away to spy Moira’s trembling fingers.

Maybe it’s because she’s tired, Angela muses, gluing the worst of the gashes and leaving all the criss-crossed slashes and gaping little wounds to be mended by the pod and a healthy slathering of biosalve. It would be the obvious option, only Angela knows Moira O’Deorain like the back of her hand and knows she can function without three days’ worth of sleep. Something about being able to compartmentalise and reserve her energy in some unfathomable way.

She rules out being scared, or sick, or anything a normal human being might experience. Maybe she’s nervous about Jack's assessment of her technology on this mission. Maybe she’s worried that Jack found out -- about _everything,_ not just her strange projects -- with the way he’s perched in the corner with his hawkelike gaze fixed to Reyes.

Or maybe it’s just a silly _alpha_ thing, Angela thinks, almost sardonically, and she’d roll her eyes if she could afford to look away from Reyes’ gaping back. She’s read every journal that’s been published, scrutinised all the tests, and all of her own research. She knows inside-out every aspect of human biology, both primary and secondary.

“But you can’t _know_ everything,” Moira had told her, leaning into the arm of a leather chair in the rec room, a tumbler of something detrimental to her inhibitions held loosely in her gentle hand. “We’re all human, but our sexes are different. Our blood is different. You can’t know how it feels in my veins. Just as I can’t possibly begin to fathom how it is to be an omega.”

Angela, curled into the chair opposite her and nursing a tea, only scoffed, and Moira had turned her attention to the softly popping hearth, and pretended she couldn’t feel Angela watching her.

The memory is far away now, and slippery, just as Zurich is; but dwelling won’t hasten the mission, so she doesn’t.

It dawns on Angela that Amari probably confiscated Moira’s cigarettes before they dropped, and that’s what all this behaviour is due to. She cracks a small smile behind her mask and tries not to huff too loudly. Tomorrow, when Gabe’s pieces are all put back together, and when they’ve finished scouting, maybe Angela will walk into what’s left of the town and find her a fresh pack, flirt with the agent manning mess hall a little for extra rations and give her her portion of chocolate.

At this point Reyes’ back is more gauze than skin, but Angela doesn’t doubt that tomorrow morning she’ll slump into the mess hall -- the dilapidated schools’ scant cafeteria -- and find Gabe sipping tentatively at a coffee as if he wasn’t half dead a day ago. They transfer him to a gurney, where the nurses wheel him to the back of the room where three softly glowing cots lay behind collapsable cotton privacy walls. Angela doesn’t watch him get plugged in, doesn’t need to. Instead she watches Moira pull off her mask and hiss through her teeth.

“Something stinks,” she mutters, snapping her gloves off and running her fingers through her damp hair, unintentionally mussing it.

Angela rolls her eyes, and gives Jack a nod, before starting off to the double-doors keeping the gymnasium sealed for them. “Perhaps it’s all the blood you have under your nails.”

“No,” Moira snaps, and she wasn’t even expecting Moira to be following her, let alone to receive an answer from her. “It’s sweet. Like fruit.”

“You’re imagining things,” Angela tells her, shouldering through the doors and following the hall til she finds the schools’ locker rooms. “The only fruit around here is the scented bandaids we were supplied with for the children.” She shakes her head, pushing into the room. “We’re in a warzone. I think they're going to need a little more therapy than _that._ ”

Moira doesn’t reply this time but Angela doesn’t really mind. Depending on Moira’s mood their conversations can take all sorts of abrupt ends, or last into the early hours of the morning.

The locker room is blessedly empty of other humans, but stocked with stiff towels and sweatpants, all neatly folded on a bench against the wall near the shower cubicles. Angela reminds herself to track down the person in charge of laundry and vow to put in a good word to Amari for them.

“Isn’t this lovely,” Angela goes on to say, filling Moira’s silence. Her voice bounces off the tiles. “For as long as we’ve been here I’ve always had to wait for a shower. I suppose the only good thing about this ungodly hour is that mostly everyone’s asleep by now.” 

And again with the silence. Angela huffs and unties her blood-smeared smock, tossing it over the bench and setting to peel off her shirt and kick off her boots. Then, when Moira still hasn’t responded, she turns on her.

And Moira’s even more flushed than when she was stooped over the operating table, and the glaring, yellowed lights overhead make it obvious her skin is glistening with sweat. Her lips have been bitten to blush, and they’re chapped. But it’s her eyes, blown black and glossy, fixed on the dip of Angela’s bared belly and the shells of her hips that trap Angela’s words in her tight throat.

Angela bites her bottom lip, soft and plump. Her heart twists with nerves.

Moira sniffs, again, and this time her wince is obvious, and harsh, as if she's ducking a blow. 

It’s strange.

“I need to go,” is what Moira eventually says, and her voice is shaky, but she sounds like she’s talking to herself, and her eyes are staring hard at a point over Angela’s shoulder. “Enjoy your shower.”

So very strange.

Angela barely manages to open her mouth to reply before Moira is turning on her heel and clipping out of the locker room and back down the hall, leaving the door swinging behind her.

 

Moira isn’t at the mess hall for breakfast the following day, which isn’t surprising, considering she seems to thrive off of a diet of coffee and the occasional splurge on bunker-grade dehydrated fruit. But she isn’t in the showers when Angela walks by and presses her ear to the door. Moira isn’t at roll call, and she isn’t here with Lena and Reinhardt, milling about in the dropship, waiting on their orders. 

No doubt it’s only more of the same: combing the town for the survivors Null Sector left behind, rounding them up and stitching all their wounds, and sending them to the checkpoint near the capital. A simple mission, only needing a handful of scouts accompanying them. That’s probably why no one seems phased by Moira’s absence; which is fair, really, considering Moira rarely is assigned to the field anyway. 

But Angela can’t help the way her fingers drum against her thigh as they all suit up, and the way she glances out across the courtyard to the dilapidated school-turned-base too many times than she’s comfortable to count.

“Hey, doc,” Lena chirps, thumbing the straps of the glowing chronal accelerator. Angela blinks down at her like she’s some kind of insect. “You ready to roll?”

Did she miss something? Angela knows not everyone -- no one, really -- is a fan of O’Deorain; but for the past three days she’s been slugging it along with them, her bulky pack brimming with biotic energy over her shoulders, and she’s a good doctor, even if her bedside manner leaves something to be desired. She’s always been there to pick them up and put them back together at every beck and call, and most of the syringes sloshing around in their medkits are credited to her studies of hyper cell-regen. Surely someone is wondering where she’s slinking?

Lena stares up at her. “Of course,” Angela says too quickly, and she clears her throat and pulls a med-pack on her shoulders, pointedly ignoring the locker next to hers, housing Moira’s Blackwatch gear.

“ _All right,_ ” Amari is saying in their ears, and the comm-line crackles softly. “ _The sooner we clear section D the sooner we all get to go home. I’ll be guiding you for this one, seeing as Commander Reyes is still on bedrest._ ”

Maybe Moira’s simply watching over the commander and ensuring that he makes a full, speedy recovery. Maybe one of his wounds reopened and Moira’s patching the split. 

But Angela bites her lip, boots thumping against the cragged, crumbling cobblestone as they move out, because any nurse could do either of those things.

They stalk the empty streets, two drones flanking them and whirring overhead. Even though she’s at the back of the party with two senior medics beside her Angela keeps her hand poised by her hip, and her eyes dart from shadow to shadow, her breath a quick, harsh thing between her dry lips. She didn’t sleep well last night. Gabe’s shredded back is an ever-present gory flash of bone and blood when she blinks, and in her periphery lay a slew of hypothetical threats. Every upturned powerbox is the base of a Bastion unit, a snapped fire hydrant its turret.

Angela swallows, and thumbs her pistol. The incident with Gabe was the first of its kind, and only happened because he got cocky. He didn’t have his armor equipped, and he didn’t have his party flanking him and checking his blind spots for him. Up ahead Reinhardt's’ shield shimmers in front of the group. In front of her Lena darts around corners and blinks back, never straying too far, never leaving a single brick unturned.

But they had Moira when everything fell apart. Her tech kept the commander alive long enough to reach the base. Angela shakes her head and pulls tightly on the straps of her med-kit. "Stay alert," she warns the team. The grin Lena shoots her manages to quell a small surge of her uneasiness, for now.

For the first half hour they find no one, til they come across a charred body stuck under the rubble, and Angela marks their location with a neat little X on the map on her datapad with pursed lips. Lena pulls a small sheet from her pack and covers the mess, and briefly shuts her eyes, whispering under her breath. 

And then they carry on. They’re all used to this, after all.

Inside a softly-smoldering convenience store they find an elderly man who speaks little English, but is conscious enough to lift his shirt and point to the blackened gash splitting his side open. One of the medics hisses under their breath. Angela frowns.

Already she has her pack off of her shoulders and open in front of her, rolls of bandages and a plastic case of vials spilling out like guts. _Shit,_ Angela thinks, and she bites her lip. _Shit._ “Who has the biosalve?”

The medics look at each other like they’ve never seen another person before. Angela holds her pack upside-down and shakes, and rifles through the pile of needles and gauze and burn-cream and plastic-wrapped face masks, and she almost growls. Almost.

It would only take a puff off Moira’s biotic energy and he’d be fixed. But Angela doesn’t think about that. 

“Check your packs.” Her tone is surprisingly mild. “ _S_ _omeone_ has to have the biosalve if _I_ don’t.”

She can’t think about that.

Vogel rips into his, crouching down and muttering in angry Dutch as he sorts through the mess, and when Jarvinen comes up with nothing she starts to prep a syringe instead, plugging it into a little golden vial of swirling, shimmering liquid.

Angela purses her lips. “Where is it?” She thinks she already knows.

Lena’s hanging in the blown-open entryway of the store, keeping eyes on the street. Reinhardt is conversing with Amari over the comm, whilst assembling a compact stretcher as quickly as he can manage. 

“I think,” Jarvinen starts, and she pulls on her gloves and tests the syringe. “It was in Dr O’Deorain’s med-kit yesterday. When- when Commander Reyes-”

It’s the first anyone’s mentioned her all day. “And where is Dr O’Deorain, by the way?” Angela asks incredulously, pulling on her own gloves and pressing her wrist to the man’s forehead. He’s running a fever so hot she almost winces.

She shouldn’t be frustrated. She knows it’s no good taking it out on her team.

Jarvinen frowns at her, needle between her fingers, and Angela’s never been _frowned at_ before, especially not by someone beneath her in rank. “Shouldn’t you know?” Jarvinen cocks her head, and it’s the strange confusion on her face -- the surprised look of knowing something Angela doesn’t -- that prompts Angela to lean forward and snatch the syringe out of her hands.

She doesn’t deliberate on it. She doesn’t ask for her explanation. Angela just leans down and forgets about Moira’s apparently justified disappearance and speaks to the man in gentle French, and she lines the needle to the crook of his arm, and informs medical over the comm that the wound has turned septic, and they’ll need to prep a biopod for a level four.

Perhaps the gel would have bought them a little more time. Maybe it wouldn’t, because the man had no doubt been laying here for at days after the heavy bombings stopped, and without all her scans and reads there’s no way Angela can discern the degree of emergency accurately. But Moira could, with just a look. And Moira would have been ready for this mission, and she would have had her gear, and she would have had the damned gel.

The antibiotics stream into the man’s arm and Jarvinen soothes him when he winces and whines. Vogel hands Angela the tube of numbing gel, of which she applies a liberal amount to the gash, and readies a strip of dissolvable gauze for her to cover it with. The wound is crusty with black scab, but when Angela pushes into it with two fingers a glob of fresh red blood dribbles out.

By the time they have him dosed with enough ibuprofen to even make it back to the base Angela’s conceived of only one reasonable explanation for Moira’s absence, of which being she contracted some incurable, fretful malady and died in her sleep. Even then, she’d probably have found _some_ way to materialise her spirit so that she could still loom over Angela’s shoulder and whisper little quips in her ear. The thought alone makes her bristle.

With heavy clouds overhead they jog back to the base, the old man dosing on the stretcher between Vogel and Jarvinen with Angela keeping her hand steady on the wound. A group from medical is already waiting to meet them in the courtyard, and Angela only looks away from the blood-stained gauze to peer through Reinhardt’s shield and look for a glimmer of red against the grey.

But there’s nothing. Just blue scrubs against broken bricks, every face determined and relieved to see them. Two of the nurses run forward to commandeer the stretcher, and within moments they’re taking the man back inside the school. She doesn’t stare long. She turns, and relays the details in quips to Fitz, the head nurse, who nods and regards her with a kindness in his eyes Angela’s not particularly accustomed to seeing.

“We’ve got a list of missing persons that I’m sure he’ll be on,” Fitz tells her, fingers tapping the screen of his data pad. “We’ve been quiet here, so we’ll have him stitched up and sent to Brussels before the day’s over.”

“Good to hear.” Angela throws another glance around, but there’s still no sign of Moira. It hits Angela that she’s probably in the surgery today, and was on the other side of Angela’s orders, and has a biopod warm and ready for their civillian. That’s why Jarvinen was so confused. God, Angela thinks, she really needs to get more sleep.

They all do. Fitz’ eyes are red raw, and he squints down at his pad like the brightness is spearing his brain. Vogel is leaning against the half-blown apart fountain with his arms folded and his eyes shut, and Lena is stuffing her mouth with her fist to stifle a yawn.

Before long Amari is emerging from the building and stalking through the courtyard towards them. Of all of them, she’s slept the least. It probably doesn’t help that Reyes is currently incapacitated.   

She nods to them all, and Fitz offers a salute, before going back to his typing.

“Captain,” Angela says, smiling a little. She doesn’t get one in return.

“Fitz,” Amari says, “I need you to relieve Dr Ziegler out in the field, effective immediately. Go get suited up. _Now._ ”

Fitz doesn’t linger another second; he scuttles off across the courtyard to the drop ship as if Amari is a wildfire chasing him down. But Angela frowns, and when Amari cocks her head back to the school and turns on her boot heel, she understands to follow. 

But she doesn’t understand much else.

“Captain?”

Nothing. Amari doesn’t look at her. Amari doesn’t even act like she’s there.

Angela swallows. “Is it Commander Reyes? Ana, is he-”

Amari quickly leads them into the school’s foyer and rounds a corner into an empty hallway, lined with cracked photo-frames and honour boards and dust-covered children's artworks. It’s like it’s been trapped in time, and it smells damp, stale. Angela almost has to jog to keep up. 

Ana’s black hair swishes in its ponytail, and she holds her hands tightly behind her back, and if there weren’t gloves in the way Angela would bet her knuckles are white. Ana leads her deep into the school, up two flights of stairs to what seems to be a level of classrooms. They haven’t occupied this this far into the building, they haven’t needed to, and Angela’s about to ask again just what they’re doing here when Ana suddenly stops. She scans the hallway, and chooses a door to open, two from the end of the corridor. 

It’s jarring, and makes Angela’s breath hitch, to see all the desks side swept against the windows, to see all the scattered school bags and the opened pencil cases, like some kind of a time capsule. Everything is intact from when Null Sector dropped here, to this little pocket town in country Belgium. With a steel in her eyes she looks back at Amari, who still refuses to acknowledge her. 

Moments drift by in stifled silence. Angela watches her clench and unclench her fist, the only telltale sign that she’s thinking. That she’s hesitating.

Angela takes this reprieve to shut her weary eyes, to let her mind drift slowly. Just a few minutes, she thinks, to just put herself on stand-by, to charge herself up. Amari doesn’t speak for so long Angela’s sure she’s starting to fall asleep and dream, because there’s a slowly growing scent clinging to the air that doesn’t belong in the categories of blood, stale, or bullets. Something pleasantly sweet, unimaginably unreal, like an oasis in the middle of a desert. 

It’s then that Amari speaks. She seems to have made up her mind. “Reyes is fine. I’ve been assured he’ll be back tomorrow.”

Moira’s diagnosis. If it were up to her he’d be on rest for a week, but Moira has a no-bullshit way about her, and she knows that there’s no way Gabe would let himself be out of commission for so long. They’ll no doubt fall behind schedule without him. May as well up the level on the biopod and let him have his way and they’ll all be able to leave quicker.

This time when Amari speaks her voice is stiff, like the rest of her. She at least turns back to Angela, and looks her in the eye, but that just sends a nervous knot twisting in her stomach. “Angela. You’re now my only head of surgery until we’ve got this mess cleared up. I need you on-call at all times: that means no more fieldwork.”

What? Any dreams clinging to her foggy mind dissipate. “What happened to Dr O’Deorain?”

Something severe passes over Ana’s features, her eyes go dark. She opens her mouth and then falters, and her hand twitches. A long moment drags out before she speaks again.

“Dr O’Deorain has been rendered incapacitated for the remainder of this mission.”

 _What_? “She was fine yesterday,” Angela tries, and then she swallows whatever she was about to say next. She feels inexplicably cold.

“Was she?” Ana asks, and it sounds bitter, and sardonic, like she wants to laugh but can’t. “Anything you’re not telling me, Ziegler?”

“I’m confused.” It comes back to her: the shaking, the sweating. “Where is Moira now?”

Ana looses a steady breath, and chews her words in deliberation. “I’m not having her compromise any part of this operation, and she doesn’t want the backlash of such jeopardisation, either, should it occur. Therefore under her own urgency, and my judgement, she’s been placed in solitary confinement for the remainder of our time here."

Angela frowns, and glances around at the empty classroom, down the dusty, unmonitored hall. “This is rather solitary,” she says slowly. “Why did you bring me _here_ to tell me this?”

Where is Moira?

Ana lets herself smile, only it’s cold, and brittle. She shakes her head, and plays with the little piece in her ear. “Because you’re a smart woman, Angela. Because you know you can’t run a surgery alone in a warzone. You need two people.”

Angela gapes at her as she watches Ana pull out her comm line and drop it on the scuffed, muddy linoleum and crush it beneath her heel. She goes to speak, to ask her _what is even going on_ , but Ana’s quick to dismiss her.

“If I told you what to do on the record my ass would be on the line and you would be under constant scrutiny for fear of your ability to work at your level, as an _omega,_ ” Ana says quietly, hurriedly, and she’s never looked more human before. She steps close into Angela’s space. “And as a friend, I can’t even ask you to do this. And I won’t. I want you to have a choice.” 

“A choice in what?” Angela asks, her voice low, her eyes wide. “A choice in _what_?”

Ana levels with her with a look that traps her breath in her chest. She purses her lips, and then she decides, and finally she says, “Moira’s gone into rut, and it’s too late for any kind of medicine to have a positive effect.”

Oh.

The shaking. The sweating.

Oh. 

“You’re her friend,” Ana’s saying, and her fists are clenching, and she won’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know what I thought. But I thought, if there was anyone--” 

“Stop.” Angela shuts her eyes. She has to keep herself from laughing. “Please, Ana, it’s okay. It’s really okay.”

But Ana doesn’t stop. “--She wants to wait it out, but we’re understaffed as it is, and with Reyes down--”

“It’s _fine_ ,"Angela says, and she smiles. “It’s as you said. You haven’t asked me to do anything. And I won’t.” Angela shrugs, and meets Ana’s frazzled gaze. “And we’re only going to be here a few more days. Let Moira sweat it out. It’ll teach her a lesson.”

Ana only stares at her.

“I’ve ran a surgery on my own before,” Angela laughs, waving her off. “Sleep is overrated.”

She doesn’t wait for Ana to dismiss her, or to see if Ana even has anything else to say. Angela turns on her heel and walks out of the room, and down the hall, and she breathes through her mouth, and keeps her eyes hard.

She doesn’t know where she’s walking in this maze of classrooms, but she isn’t smiling any more.

If Ana is following her she doesn’t notice, because there’s only one thing she can think about, and that’s that Moira is in _rut._ She’s holed herself away and she’s messy and she’s in her rut, because she forgot her suppressants, and Angela’s seen her file: she doesn’t have an implant. She relies on those little pills.  

Angela passes a weary hand over her dusty, dirty face and catches her reflection in a cracked trophy cabinet as she passes by. Her eyes are blown wide. Her lips are parted. Despite the tiredness etched into all the wrinkles around her mouth and the bags beneath her eyes, she looks alert. Awake. Her breath is thick and hot but she hasn’t been running. Her mouth has gone dry.

Angela sniffs, tentative and small, and it feels like a punch in the face. She’s on this floor. She can _smell_ her; bosky, earthy, it’s her. That was her scent that she smelled before. It has to be. Because for the past three days all there’s been is gunpowder and blood and the starchy soap in the showers, and this is so different. Knowing that Moira -- meticulous, cold, callous Moira O’Deorain -- is in this broken state, is so different.

She doesn’t want to imagine Moira locked away in a classroom, sweating through her clothes with a hand down her trousers. She won’t. 

Angela tries not to think about why Ana brought her here. That it had to be _here,_ where the scent of Moira’s sex would dampen her inhibitions, where her tired, foggy mind would make the easy decision for her. The right decision.

She’s not mad with Ana, like she should be, because she understands.

She doesn’t even realise she’s come to the flight of stairs Ana lead her up til her hip hits the banister. Angela rubs her eyes til she sees colours and lets out a shaky breath through her teeth. One week. She can go without sleep for one more week. She has to _._

Maybe she _is_ being stubborn: all Moira would need to do is pop her knot two or three times and her rut would be over, and everything would return to some semblance of normalcy, and they’d never speak about it ever again. They’d all forget it happened for the greater good, and the operation would prevail, and Overwatch would be commended for its resilience during this horrible war. They’d go back to the labs. Moira would go back to ignoring her.

Angela swallows. Her skin is prickly, too tight, too hot.  
  
Maybe that’s why she won’t do it: because it won’t change anything.

 

  
No one else knows.

It is blatantly clear that Ana has taken extreme measures to keep the situation locked down. No one asks her where O’Deorain is. No one even mentions her name, as if their tongues are glued to the roofs of their mouths with fear. If Angela had it in her she’d snort, because everyone knows Reyes and Morrison are fucking, might have even accidentally bonded in the midst of a tryst, what with the way Jack keeps his collars high and Reyes keeps too many tabs on him. If there was going to be an inquiry into the functionality of the alphas and omegas of Overwatch, it wouldn’t start with Moira O’Deorain accidentally forgetting her meds. 

But Angela is too exhausted to snark -- she’s drained, can barely move her hand to spoon a lump of cobbled vegetables to herself as she sits in the cafeteria-slash-mess hall, and she watches Ana plate up her own tray with the pumpkin-potato blend and a chunk of bread with a weary-eyed lethargy, and leave with a canteen of water.

To her office, she’ll say, no other explanation needed. Angela watches her leave, but Ana doesn’t look back at her. She watches her hair swish behind her through the windows, and then she rounds the corner, and she disappears from view. 

The pale orange mush swirls in front of her eyes. Angela doesn’t know what excuse Ana’s given for Moira’s absence, and whatever Jarvinen knew has miraculously not been shared with the rest of the team. It’s been three days, and Ana hasn’t even spoken one word to her. But she catches her staring after her, sometimes, her lips pursed as if she’s watching a stubborn child being extraordinarily precocious. 

And maybe she is being stubborn, and maybe she is acting out, only not because she’s offended Ana even _ask_ her to fuck Moira, or because she’s being a haughty omega, or whatever reason Ana thinks. If only it was that simple; any of those reasons would be more convenient than the truth.

It doesn’t help that their John Doe died only hours after he was brought in. The rational part of Angela knows that Moira probably wouldn’t have been able to save him, either, and that the sepsis had just progressed too far. But it weighs on her, because how could it not. There's a maybe that whispers in her head, there was a slim chance that Moira's tech would have worked.

How many more civilians will die under her wing? Under Overwatch? 

There’s a shuffle to her right; heeled boots and soft black slacks-- no. She blinks. Boots and royal blue army trousers. “Hey, Doc?” Angela doesn’t look up, but she spies the way Jesse fidgets with his gangly prosthetic. “Angela? Are you alright? You ain’t looking too hot.”

When Angela realises she only answered him in her head she grunts and waves him off. “Did you need anything?” 

The boy’s barely old enough to be here, in Overwatch, in all of this mess. Reyes’ little project. Moira told Angela that he only tagged along on this operation so he could _see what it’s like,_ the death and destruction and the emptiness everywhere; like some fucked up bring-your-son-to-work day, only with more bullets.

Jesse swallows. “No, I just. I heard Gabe-- Commander _Reyes_ saying something about, um. Not having this quadrant finished yet. And that he ain’t ‘ _field ready’_ although, he didn’t say it like that--”

The words knock around in Angela’s skull. Pulling them apart feels like wrestling with tar. She doesn't understand. 

“--And you look awful tired, Doc. I think you deserve a night off. But that might… be a little while yet.” Jesse’s hair is pulled back off his face with an elastic. He watches her with something sad hanging on his face, but Angela’s foggy mind translates it to whatever expression Ana’s been pulling at her lately, and pushes out from the table. She’s barely touched her food.

“I can do another week,” she mutters, and Jesse just stares at her. Neither says anything more, til Angela pushes around him, and he calls out to her.

She ignores it. She shoulders through the double doors and turns right, in the opposite direction that Ana took, and she stalks to the medbay. A nap, she just needs a nap, just needs to recharge. Then she can go another week, another fortnight, another _month_ if she has to, because Angela Ziegler always does her job. Always.  

 _Except this time,_ whispers something in her ear. She grits her teeth and her boots drag against the linoleum. It’s not her problem if Moira forgot her suppressants. Just because she’s the only omega on the mission doesn't mean she’s the lucky winner of the honour of fucking Moira through her rut.

It’s like the little voice in her head won’t shut up, though. It’s incessant, even as she slumps into the gymnasium-slash-medbay and past the compactable walls they’ve squared off the infirmary with. Fuck her; no one else will die. Fuck her, and Angela will get to sleep. Angela punches the buttons on a biopod with grit teeth, and the outer rim of the pod lights up, sickly green and glaringly bright, and the spongy padding yields to her when she lays down atop it. She just needs to _sleep_ , Angela tells herself as the pod starts to hum, and she shuts her eyes. Just fifteen minutes.  

The nurses are watching her, she knows, but the moment Angela shuts her eyes she’s out like a light, plunged somewhere dark, somewhere deep inside herself that she keeps adequately smothered when she isn’t delirious with sleep deprivation.

Her dreams are broken, flickers of things, nothing absolute enough to identify. But when the pod turns itself off and a nurse coughs inconspicuously loud by her side, Angela wakes with warmth between her thighs, and squeezes her eyes shut against the feeling.

“Doctor Ziegler,” the nurse -- Patterson -- says, very soft and very fragile. She doesn’t look her in the eye. “I know it isn’t my place to say, but perhaps, you should retire for a full cycle in the biopod, and maybe then you’d feel--”

“I know how I feel,” Angela hisses, and she rubs her eyes shut again so everything will stop spinning. Moira’s there, Moira’s down there in the dark. She’s already made her way between her thighs. “I feel _fine._ ” 

Patterson doesn’t seem to have heard her. She checks her wrist-comm. She presses on. “It’s 1400 hours, and the scouts won’t be back for another two hours at least. Why don’t you get some proper sleep?” She’s younger than Angela, but she’s looking at her over her glasses seemingly somehow both terrified and condescending and Angela _hates_ it. She’s been on the receiving end of looks like that far too often in her career, for what she is, and far too often in the last three days, for how she’s been snarling. 

But she chews her anger, and stares at the farthest wall away from her. She feels like a child again, like she’s ceding all her limited power. But how small she feels right now doesn’t seem to dominate how exhausted she is. And there’s a part of her still in there that knows how she’s affecting everyone, and she hates it. She hates that more than anything. 

She lets a steady breath through her nose, and considers Patterson’s nervous countenance. “You’ll wake me if anything comes in you can’t handle?”

“Of course,” Patterson says with a fleeting smile that trembles at the edges, as if letting slip anything too joyous and relieved will make Angela change her mind. Angela won’t pretend that she hasn’t been hard to deal with in her addled state, but surely it’s better to have her grouchy self around than O’Deorain, who would no doubt have broken more needles than she’d administered in her clumsiness, and would bark orders at them all, the betas keeping their heads down and breathing through their mouths to avoid her scent.

It’s strange, that her gut twists in excitement at that thought. That she feels herself getting wetter over it. Moira’s presence is commanding on a normal day, where a clipped quip can make even Amari purse her lips and imagining the two makes Angela swallow. But this is different, now. She’s never been around Moira when she’s like this, having let her sex get the best of her; doesn’t know what she’s capable of.  
  
She imagines herself kneeling with her head bowed, conjures that wet-wood smell that lingered in the classrooms, pictures Moira, flushed and hard; Angela’s jaw clicks. She must be more exhausted than she realised.

Patterson’s stare is watery, and like she’s summoned all the courage she has to hold it. This is how everyone acts around Moira; even her, though that's whittled down to something to do with gender.

She’s going to go crazy if she doesn’t get Moira out of her head.

“Two hours,” Angela says when she can gather her voice. She raises a finger. “If I’m left to sleep a minute more I will personally hand-write the termination letter of the medical professional responsible.” 

She can see the pure rapture lighting Patterson’s eyes. “We’ll wake you,” she squeaks, hurriedly programming the machine, and Angela waves her off. Then she lays back down, and stares at the wood beams high overhead. She listens to Patterson key in a full run of the pod, a level one case, and lets herself shut her eyes.

The pod hums and glows, and a small puff of nanytes sprays coolly against her face. It feels so good, _so good,_ and Angela tries not to whimper.

She said she could do one week. One week of fleeting naps hooked up to a dozen different stimulants. One week, then Moira would be back to normal and they’d be strapped into the flight home. She didn’t say she could do two.  
  
Her thighs are sticky when she rubs them together, her lips are dry. It’d just be so _easy…_  

No, _no._ She isn’t deciding anything like this, in this state. This isn’t what she wants: she’s only reacting in such a brazen, wanton way because of Moira’s rut. Because of her own biological programming. Because she’s _exhausted_ to the point of tears. But her mind whispers to her, little dark wants she never lets bubble to the surface, her true biological purpose: _serve them, love them, fuck them._ Let them breed you. Let them adore you.

Inhale. Exhale. She doesn’t feel any calmer. She doesn’t feel much of anything, really, til sleep flirts with the edges of her mind, and tells her that she feels Moira: on top of her, inside of her. That it could be real. That it could be more than the dirty fantasies she tries to drown every morning, that it doesn’t have to be her fingers next time. 

But she knows that.

 

It’s well beyond six in the evening when she wakes up, and interestingly there are no nurses to be found in the infirmary, and no patients in the biopods either side of her. Angela _seethes._ She glares at the little green lights on the side of the pod that tell her just how _late_ it is, and angrily jambs her thumb against the panel, and pulls up her vitals.

Perfectly sound. She’s had the equivalent of a full nine hours’ sleep, her fluids are up, and all she’s due for is a trip to the bathroom and perhaps a light dinner. 

Angela practically growls as she swings out of the pod and stalks out of the gym, down the hall, and across the lobby, and by the time she’s made it to the showers her anger has coalesced into a twisting thing in her gut. That’s where it stays, with no one to aim it at. No doubt everyone is in the cafeteria taking an early dinner. Patterson probably warned them all to flee, and is keeping herself scarce.

She can’t say she blames her. She _does_ feel a lot better after her sleep. She’d… probably have done the same, if the roles were reversed. But Angela doesn’t need the board thinking she’s incapable of doing her damned job, because they’ll decide it’s because of her sex, and she doesn’t want Ana thinking she’s lost without Moira, tetherless without an alpha to keep her in check.

And she looks… horrible, truly. Angela stares at herself in the streaky mirrors in the locker rooms, and almost looks away in disgust. The biopod tried its hardest to clear the bags from under her eyes, to inject some life into her pallid skin, but the effects of her exhaustion are still grossly visible. Her hair is greasy and limp, and she’s sure she’s lost weight, even if only a little. It leaves her hips jutting rather than round, and her collar looks brittle, and sharp where it peeks through her button up 

She’s blissfully alone here, in the showers, just like she was when she came here with Moira. If she’d known, back then, what would she have done? If she maybe wasn’t so tired from reconstructing Gabe, and if she’d picked up on Moira’s symptoms, her scent, how would she have acted? 

If Moira wanted her, her needs whittled down to _mate-claim-breed,_ would she have stopped her?

Angela peels her shirt up and over her stiff shoulders. She fights with her sports bra for a moment before she untangles herself from that, too. Then she kicks off her boots, and shucks her pants, and stares at herself for a good long moment.

Then she scoffs. Of course she wouldn’t have stopped her. 

She’s wanted to fuck Moira since she met her.

Some kind of laugh escapes her, a warble of hysteria. There’s nothing stopping her now, really, except for Moira’s own decision on the matter.

(She takes her shower ice cold and thorough. She doesn’t miss a spot.)

And Moira must be so tired, too; she must be _exhausted._ If ruts are anything like heats, Angela can assume her skin is too hot and sticky to sleep comfortably, her body too amped to stay still and her nerves completely flayed. 

(Back in the shared medical quarters, which are merely a repurposed old faculty room, she rifles through the few clothes she brought with her. She pulls on a skirt, her blouse, which her hair wets and without a bra her nipples show through.)

Moira’s a disaster of a human being and a dangerous workaholic at the best of times. And she’s fragile, in her own way. When in a temper she is partial to breaking things, but unfortunately, she’s usually the first thing to shatter.

And she’s probably.

So. 

Angry.

With herself. With the situation. Without her meds.  

All she has is a grade-school classroom and her own right hand and Ana waiting on her with mashed fucking pumpkin.

All Angela has to do is hit her at the right angle.

With twitching hands Angela combs her fingers through her wet hair. She used shampoo, even, and her skin is as soft as it can be, and she smells clean. With the pad of her thumb she rubs the jumping little pulse in her neck, then Angela replaces her thumbs with her wrists. Unless she’s in heat Angela can’t smell her own scent, but without her blockers and with how slick she was when she cleaned herself she’s positive Moira will.

Angela steps into her shoes, and she gives herself one final look.

And she leaves the faculty office. 

And she slips into the cafeteria, and takes a tray, keeping her head down and stepping into the line.

And she catches Ana catching her, and giving her a strange look, before it fizzles into something impassive. Then Ana turns back to Morrison where they’re talking on the fringes of the cluster of tables, and for one heavy second Angela’s sure that it’s going to be over. Ana will tell Jack everything, and there’ll be an inquiry from the higher-ups, and of course Moira will take all the blame, as usual, and it’ll probably be her fourth strike.

From the other side of the counter someone gives her a chunk of bread for her tray. Angela’s mouth goes tacky.

But Ana doesn’t look her way again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone for reading and leaving such lovely comments! I'm so happy that this is being well received! ~~(So happy, in fact, that this sprouted another chapter)~~
> 
> Mild warning for ambiguous genitals from here on out.

There had been a time, once, when all the _little somethings_ took seed and sprouted into an _almost something._ When all the lingering looks and the not-so-accidental touches started to rise in occurrence, and Moira tried to warn her off with her vicious glares and cold shoulders. Angela, ever stubborn and stupidly naive, only laughed, and kept standing too close, and watching her far more than what was necessary.

It was in the rec room, so deep in the night it had turned to early morning, and their work was paused for but a brief moment. Zurich was still, quiet and softly sleeping, and offering an interlude free of inhibitions, the kind that are quelled by the daylight.

Moira had been playing with her whiskey, and staring at the hearth.

Angela had been on the settee opposite her, and barely awake.

Sometimes, when Angela conjures the memory, she wonders if maybe she imagined it; it wouldn’t be the first time Moira featured in her dreams. But no: Angela would die before forgetting the way Moira had blushed, or the tender note to her voice. Her eyes, looking anywhere but her. Her swift dismissal and abrupt flight at the end.

“You’ve never taken a mate, have you, Angela?” she’d asked, and Angela shook her head no.

Then she blinked sleepily. “But neither have you.”

Moira shifted in her seat. She sat as though the cushion were made of needles. “Overwatch won’t be around forever to keep me occupied, but it’s futile. I can’t raise children in this horrible world, and it’s laughable to think that someone would enter into a bond with _me._ Finding someone, fucking them,” Moira pressed her glass to her lips. She stared into the hearth. “I don’t have the time for it all.”

She spoke as though she were arguing with herself. Angela frowned, and said, “The war won’t go on forever. There’ll come a time where we won’t need to fight, and there’ll _be_ time, for families. But til then that’s why we take suppressants, so we don’t have to follow our biology’s habits.”

Moira’s eyes shimmered when her gaze slid from the fire and back to Angela, as if she’d somehow taken part of the coals with her. She sat with her elbow tucked on the arm of the chair, and stared so long Angela wondered if she’d fallen asleep like that.

But then Moira had told her, “biology’s habits are hard to break.”

And Angela blinked in confusion, sleep making her eyes sore, her thoughts all tangled together. Moments passed, too many, too heavy with the weight of another  _something._ Just as she went to open her mouth, Moira stood, and didn’t look at her again. “Actually,” she decided, voice tight, “don’t mind me. I should be off. Good night.”

And Angela sat there wondering what she had been trying to imply.

Maybe she wanted children. Maybe she was getting clucky in her age and had realised just how many opportunities she might’ve missed in her youth.

Maybe she needed to up her meds.

_Biology’s habits are hard to break._

Because it seemed like, maybe, Moira had been only whispers away from relieving something great off her chest.

Now, standing in the middle of the hallway in the middle of the abandoned school, carrying a tray of bread with her breath rattling her lungs, the memory flitters back to her. If Angela had been more awake, more mature, more demure, perhaps Moira would have found _her_ a suitable mate. The thought sends something hot down her core.

But this, now, isn’t about _bonding_. This is just about getting through the week, about getting enough sleep. Angela reminds herself that, and she brings her dry knuckles up to the old wood door, and raps her presence gently.

She’s sure it’s this door, the one at the very end of the corridor, because she followed Moira’s scent, and recognised the classroom Ana took her into on the way. Two doors up, and that realisation hit her with something strange. It’s not as if Ana brought her here like a death sentence, but she’d acted so morose, as if it was. As if Angela truly was the soft omega prey her sex had been thousands of years back in history, and Moira the savage alpha she was made to satisfy. As if Ana was a premeditator in something much more sinister than simply fucking.

No answer.

She’s sure that Moira’s here, because when Angela presses her ear to the wood she can hear rustling, and frantic wet breaths. If Angela blushes, she pretends she doesn’t, and pulls away to knock once more.

There’s a _growl_ that comes from the other side of the door, vicious and low and so full of heat it sends a shiver across Angela’s shoulders. Something is spat in Gaelic, too quiet for her to discern, but then, Moira speaks with every intention of making herself clear.

“I _heard_ you,” she hisses, and it’s muffled, and ragged, and Angela can’t help the way she presses her thighs together. “I’m not hungry. Just leave it by the door.”

Oh, of course.

Angela swallows thickly against the lump in her throat. She must think she’s Ana, dropping off her dinner.

If Moira went to such great lengths to stow herself away from everybody else on the mission, no less the only omega around, Angela sincerely doubts she’d open the door for her if she called out. With the final vestiges of her resolve withering away Angela knocks on the door once more, and the seconds ticking by are heavy, cumbersome things that weigh on her shoulders.

She shouldn’t be here. It isn’t right of her to be here. Moira isn’t in a sound state of mind.

But, Angela thinks wearily, neither is she.

She hears more muttered grumbling, and then suddenly it’s happening, and the door is cracking open, and Moira’s scent steals all the air from her lungs. Angela can’t help the way she gasps, or the way she flinches back, especially not when Moira takes a broken, ragged breath herself, and she slumps against the door frame.

They’re silent for only seconds, then Moira finds her words.

“What are you doing here?” she spits, and her eyes are wild, and the pupils quickly consuming any colour in her iris. She stares at Angela like she’s never seen her before, like she doesn’t believe she’s real. “You can’t--” Moira chokes on her air, and breathes harshly through her teeth. “You can’t be here. I’m--”

“In rut,” Angela finishes, and she holds up her hand placatingly. She nods to the room. "I know."

It feels like an age has passed before Moira finally stops staring, instead looking her in the eye, with something sceptic and untrusting there. "Then you know it isn't… it’s not safe, for you.”

She has to crane her head up to look at her, with how close they are and with how huge Moira’s frame is. The top buttons on her shirt are undone and the material is drenched with sweat, especially around the collar. Her throat is shiny and red patches chase down across her collar, where her bones are sharp and her skin is pale, and clammy. The skin beneath her eyes is purple and deep, and this close, and with Moira this waify, Angela can spy a thin dusting of freckles over the thin bridge of her nose.

Angela licks her lips. Moira looks just as exhausted as she does.

She’s doing this for the both of them, Angela tells herself.

She’s doing this because she doesn’t want anyone else dying.

Angela shuts her eyes and the world spins. "You wouldn't ever hurt me."

Moira grimaces. She cards her shaking fingers through her fringe, which hangs down in her eyes, in a nervous attempt to regain some of the composure she normally holds. “Of all people, you shouldn’t be here. I had specific instructions that-- _you_ weren’t meant to be able to find me.”  
  
“It’s okay,” she soothes, and Angela doesn’t pretend it’s accidental, the way she tilts her head to the side. “I’m here to help.”  
  
Moira’s eyes fix on Angela’s bared throat, and she forces herself to breathe through her mouth. “It was Amari, wasn’t it.”  
  
It isn’t a question, but she still sounds so panicked. Angela tries not to snort. For all the fear Moira instills in other human beings, she seems so openly terrified of Angela’s presence here, in this cramped dirty hallway.

Maybe that’s it, though. Maybe Moira’s scared of herself.  
  
“Can I come in?”  
  
Moira shakes with a shiver. She doesn’t respond.  
  
Angela’s heavy gaze slips down to stare at the floor, but when her eyes catch the damp patch at Moira’s crotch she feels something in her shift, and her pulse hardens. “I could make it better,” she offers Moira’s shoes. “I thought I could do this on my own, but I can’t. I need you, Moira, don’t you need me?”  
  
She thinks she imagines it, she must, but no: Moira sniffs, just a little, and from her periphery Angela spies her close her eyes and hang her head forward. And Angela thinks it must be a trick of the eye, or perhaps another shudder, but no, Moira nods. Just once.  
  
Then Moira backs into the room and presses herself to the side, and Angela’s heart hammers in her chest.    
  
One of the infirmary’s collapsible cots has been brought up for her, and is pressed to the wall and sits beneath the blackboard. All the desks have been pushed up beneath the window from when the school went into lockdown, and Moira hasn’t bothered rearranging them it seems. She hasn’t brought much of anything with her into her isolation, save for a pile of folded clothes on a table, and her holopad, which is atop the lone rumpled blanket on the cot, messy from sleep and whatever else Moira has been doing.

And there’s the tray from lunch, untouched, and it feels like a month has passed between then and now.

“What did--” Moira wets her chapped lips, and looks past her, out one of the cracked windows at the encroaching night, “--what did Amari ask you to do?”

Angela sets her tray down to join its twin. “Don’t be coy, Moira. You know."

A broken laugh bubbles out of Moira, incredulous and vaguely hysterical. “I know one thing: I’m not fucking you on the sole basis that you are an omega.” Her eyes are glassy, unfocused. She’s drenched in sweat and she’s shaking, slowly falling apart. “I don’t need your _pity_.” 

“Good, because I’m not pitying you.” Angela pries the buttons on her blouse open, one, two, three, in a neat little line. She folds her tight skirt up to rest mid-thigh, stretched taut against the muscle. “And I’m not doing this for Ana: I’m here for me. I’m here because I need you out in the surgery with me.” Angela looks up at. “Because _I_ know I need you. No one but you.”

If Moira thinks she isn’t the most vulnerable person in the room, she’ll let herself break. Perhaps Angela’s laying it on thick, but Jesse said _one more week_ and it’s playing on a loop in her brain, which is clear for the first time in days. Angela can’t let Moira reject her, because she _wants_ more than a handful of hours’ sleep per day, she _wants_ medics that check their packs properly and don’t let innocents die out on the gurney.  

And the truth is, behind it all, is that Angela wants Moira, too.

It’s a long time before Moira speaks. “I respect you too much to do that to you,” she says evenly, but she’s staring at Angela’s thighs, and then up at where her shirt plunges and her swell of her breasts is exposed, and her gaze is heavy. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

Angela just shrugs. Her kitten-heels leave marks on the dusty linoleum, and she walks till she’s so close that there’s no way Moira could look anywhere but down at her. There’s no way Moira can take a breath that isn’t laced with Angela’s scent. 

“You don’t have to ask.” 

She lets her head fall to the side, exposing the pale column of her throat, her pulse fluttering beneath her thin skin, the three little moles dancing down behind her right ear.

“We don’t have to fuck, if that makes you feel better,” Angela eventually murmurs when Moira doesn’t make a move. She’s in the thick of her rut, and she’s got an unmated omega presenting herself to her like a gift: Angela has to commend her. Moira has more resolve than most alphas she’s met. “Just scent me, see if that helps.”

“That doesn’t-- that’s not how it _works._ ”

“Wouldn’t it be better than this,” Angela comments dryly, nodding to the cot. 

“I just meant,” Moira says before she can stop herself, “scenting you would only make me want you more than I already do.” 

Oh.

Angela licks her lips.

Moira stares at her for a long time, before she sighs, and rubs at her forehead. “I needed to be kept away from you. And I needed Amari to keep you in the dark. But that hardly matters now.”

It’s not exactly news to Angela, because of _course_ Moira wants her. She’s the only omega in this ghost town and Moira’s burning through her first rut in what could be years, for all Angela knows. But still, despite the circumstances, hearing Moira admit that is… jarring.

But Angela manages to compose herself. She straightens up, steps forward. “Don’t blame Ana.” Another step and their chests would be touching. “She just wants the mission to go as smooth as possible.”

“And it will: if you and I aren’t near one another. _Especially_ if we don’t fuck.”

 _What are you afraid of?_ Angela itches to ask. All it would be is mutually beneficial sex. Nothing more. 

But Angela doesn’t say that. She goes down a different avenue; one that Moira will respond to, because it doesn’t involve untangling the knot in her emotions. 

Another swallow. “I lost someone.” Moira’s shoes are scuffed, dusty like hers. “And it was my fault. My teams’ fault. It’s on all of us.”

When she looks up Moira’s mouth is a thin line, her eyes hard and focused. “Because we didn’t have you. We didn’t know to be prepared for a mission without you. Because I _needed_ you and nobody thought it _pertinent_ to tell me that you weren’t going to be there.”  

_Crack._

Angela steps forward.

“And I won’t have that happening ever again.”

Through the flimsy cotton of her shirt she can feel Moira’s body burning. She can smell her sweat, bosky and crisp, and she can feel her breath coming in heavy puffs that brush the top of her hair. Moira’s hand shakes down by her side, as if her wrist is tethered to her thigh, and her fingers are grasping at nothing.

 _Just to take the edge off,_ Angela thinks about saying, but doesn’t. There’s nothing more that needs to be said. So instead she scoops her short blonde hair over shoulder and cocks her head to the side and once again offers herself. She takes Moira’s bony hips in her hands. She shuts her eyes.

She doesn’t pretend she isn’t stirring to the way she can feel Moira, all of Moira. She can feel herself slicking, and her thoughts track into one constant little stream of _give-give-give._ Give Moira what she wants. Give her what she needs.

And Moira, in turn, lets herself break. 

It’s gentle at first, barely a brush of lips over skin. Then Moira’s fingers finally find Angela’s rib in a delicate cling, as if Angela might escape back to her fantasies, and she passes her mouth over Angela’s throat, and inhales. 

This is what she needs, Angela tells herself, mouth slack. This is what they both need.

Scenting was something very private, and for only bonded couples to enjoy, Angela’s parents had told her. After they’d died, her teachers had taught her that scenting helped to strengthen the mateship, and was more intimate than kissing, but not as important as copulation. She’d read about the studies conducted to examine the psychological and physical health benefits to the act, and Angela remembers poignantly an article reporting how an omega trapped beneath rubble had miraculously survived days without water, simply because his alpha had been on the other side of the debris. 

At the time Angela had found it a ridiculous exaggeration of romance, and rolled her eyes.

But now, with Moira’s grip ever-growing, and her breath warm against her throat, Angela wonders if it is indeed possible to thrive off of this _feeling_ running through her body. She feels so innately safe, protected in a way that no armour could ever shield her, her body warmed more thoroughly than any fire would. 

Angela’s fingers tangle in Moira’s sweater, her palms flat, and idly she realises she can feel Moira’s breasts. Gooseflesh dances along her skin, and the tingles are pleasant. She smiles. Moira’s lips press to her, and Angela moans, a quiet little sound. 

But it makes Moira groan, and her grip shifts down to Angela’s hips, so that she can pull her flush against her. Despite how many times she’s no doubt gotten herself off in a feeble attempt for some relief she’s still hard, pressing into the soft part of Angela’s belly. A twisted part of her mind tells her Moira’s desperation is triggered because of _her_ scent, _her_ pheromones and her sex, but Angela shuts those thoughts down, replaces them with the facts: that this isn’t anything more than getting Moira through this, so they can get back to the mission. 

Maybe it’s that thought, or it's frustration in the way she has to constantly remind herself to quash any emotion trying to seep into this. The understanding that the more Angela gives her, the less it’ll take to get Moira through her rut. Whatever Angela thinks, it isn’t that creeping her hand down to the the front of Moira’s sodden slacks is anything other than a legitimate means to an end. 

She’s right, in a way.

It’s a ragged-breath moment before Moira realises what she’s doing, and then her whole body runs a frigid line, and she’s pushing Angela off her, holding her firmly at arms-length.

“Just my hands,” Angela whispers, before Moira can snarl. She doesn’t meet her eyes; but that’s part of the process. “It’ll help.”

There’s a drop of sweat clinging to Moira’s throat, that sluices down across her collar, beneath her shirt. Her chest is rising and falling rapidly. “You _clearly_ don’t know what you’re doing,” she spits, her voice laden with something; venom? No. Anger. Fear. “It’s like you want to be thrown on your stomach.”

Angela pretends that doesn’t send something coiling in her. She has to.

She looks up; Moira’s eyes are wild and alight, the brown so warm it could be red, the blue so chilled it nearly makes her falter. But she won’t, can’t, not now.

“If that’s what it takes, Moira. Stop letting your morals inhibit you,” Angela licks her lips. “You haven’t ever before.” 

She expects a slap, or perhaps to be pushed onto the cot. She doesn’t expect Moira’s mouth to split into a strangely human-like smile. 

She doesn’t expect her to let her arms free, or to eventually say, in a half-whisper, half-gasp, “Okay.”

Her fingers are shaking, but Moira acquiesces, and undoes the fly on her pants. She fumbles with her underwear, til she pulls herself loose.

“A handjob,” Moira cedes, and it’s strange, hearing her say that word. “Nothing more.”

Angela nods, stepping in close and settling one hand back on Moira’s waist. The other comes to where Moira’s holding herself, and gingerly Angela pries her fingers away, and replaces them.

Moira fits her palm well, and she’s rather big for a female alpha. She’s no thicker than two of her fingers, and no longer than the width of her hand; but when Angela takes her in a gentle grip the sigh she looses from behind grit teeth is perfect. 

A surge of something swells in her chest, and for some reason Angela finds herself asking, “Do you want to kiss me?”

Moira moans brokenly, even if she doesn’t mean to. “I said _nothing more._ ”  

Angela tries to quash her smirk, letting her head fall to the side to hide it. Moira may be reluctant but she doesn’t fight herself when presented with Angela’s throat, and lets herself lean forward to scent her. This time she isn’t tentative, or skittish, and her lips brush Angela’s clammy skin too many times to be accidental. Her long fingers wrap around Angela’s arms again and this time in an almost punishing grip, but Angela doesn’t mind; she twists her wrist, moans gently, and relishes the strangled sound she pulls from Moira. 

Her hand moves quick and firm over Moira’s sex, and Angela considers pressing against her chest, or falling to her knees, or finding whatever Moira likes best to make her moan the most. If they had more time, perhaps next time-- no. This is just a matter of convenience. There’s nothing else to this.

Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t take much, and even if Angela wanted to make this better for Moira she wouldn’t have lasted long enough for such exploration. Moira comes with a pained whimper into the back of her hand, her teeth grit and her pretty eyes scrunched shut. It’s only a peek, a fleeting glance Angela steals, just to see, only to know what Moira might look like vulnerable and broken. 

But the way it makes her heart swell is dangerous. Angela instantly looks away, least she do something stupid, like lift her skirt and truly get this done with. 

Angela doesn’t breathe the entire time Moira lets her orgasm work through her. She doesn’t still her hand, either, and her come is hot, and substantially more than Angela expected, what with how frequently Moira must be getting herself off. It dribbles over her knuckles, down to her wrist, pearly-white and thick and damning. The moment Moira’s finished she pushes Angela away, softly this time, and backs herself onto the wall behind them. She sloppily tucks herself back into her soiled trousers, before her knot can swell, and wipes her hands down on her thighs. Startled, Angela crouches and rubs her own hand on the corner of the blanket on Moira’s cot; stares down at the trays of food, out at the blue night, the silver moon. Anywhere else.

Seconds pass, charged with something neither wants to acknowledge.

Perhaps it’s only awkwardness. This thing between them is only a strange not-quite-friendship, but more-than-colleagues kind of association, despite any could-have-beens in the past. Still, Angela expected... she shouldn’t have. This is Moira O’Deorain she’s dealing with, after all.

And in true Moira O’Deorain fashion, things end with a curt nod and a simple, “Thank you.” When Angela looks at her Moira has schooled her expression to something like calmed neutrality, if Angela knew she had such an emotion in her repertoire, one hand on the door handle.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I’m sure,” Moira says, and she won’t look her in the eye.

Just as formal as that night at headquarters.  

“Yes,” Angela chokes out. “I hope you feel better.”

The hallway is just as empty and dusty and lonely as it was half an hour ago, as it was three days ago. Nothing’s changed; and that’s the way it should be. Tomorrow will be a new day, and things will be back to normal, nothing having shifted between them. Why is she frustrated, then, if that’s what Angela wanted from the start.

It feels like it was all over before anything really began, and something sharp twists in her chest. The edges of her eyes sting. Her hand burns where it’s shoved down at her side, and she can still feel Moira’s come on her skin, no matter how many times she wrings out the side of her rumpled skirt. She’s being… she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t understand why she’s feeling like this, as if more should have been said, as if more should have occurred, even though rationally Angela knows that they’ve handled things to the best of their ability, in Moira’s delicate state. 

It must be because she's buzzing. It must be because of the fact she can’t remember the last time she was intimate with someone else. Whatever it is, it’ll wear off. 

It will.

It will.

  
Captain Amari won’t stop staring at her.

It’s the kind of gaze that isn’t blatant ogling, but somehow ever present. Caught from the corner of Angela’s eye just before it breaks, and shot from behind a shield of hair, or a conveniently held comm unit. Heralded by her strange behaviour, no doubt, and about as subtle as an itch in the centre of her back. If slightly unsettling, Angela finds it mostly threatless, and once or twice she’s even met Ana’s eye to give her a tight smile. 

After all, she needs to keep face. Only one stifled night has passed since she saw Moira, and the woman is already back dealing damage. 

She keeps herself confined to the infirmary, hawking over the surviving civilians brought in from Quadrant F two days ago. An overbearing shadow over the patients, Moira only ever leaves her post to stalk into the mess hall for her lunch, the only meal she needs. There are a small set of leaking changing rooms branching off of the gymnasium and if Angela had to guess she’d say that’s where Moira takes her showers, because she’s never caught her in the communal locker room. 

Somehow, she got her hands on scent blockers. Perhaps they’re Amari’s own, because Angela knows they don’t keep such _personal items_ in their stocks anymore, so Moira must have gotten them off another alpha. They won't quell the vestiges of her rut, but at least they'll help mask them, so long as Moira keeps herself in check. When they inevitably cross each other’s paths in the infirmary -- after a full day of hard avoidance -- she smells tart, and clean like soap. She doesn’t smell like fresh wood and wet foliage and rain anymore, she doesn’t smell like sweat.

It shouldn’t feel like a loss, and it shouldn't feel like she's had all her breath stolen from her.  

Maybe that's why Amari keeps looking at her.

It’d be foolish to pretend that Amari didn’t check on Moira after they were done, and Angela can’t say she’s angry. Embarrassed, maybe, knowing that the scent of her slick no doubt clung to Moira and was poignantly hanging in the room, long after she left. Maybe that’s how she garnered Amari’s attention. Angela winces. She doesn’t want to think like that. Like all the alphas around her are just waiting for their turn once Moira’s finished with her, because they aren’t like that. This isn’t like that.

At least Commander Reyes doesn’t seem to notice that something’s up with her, or Moira, or the captain. Either he doesn’t have that knack for reading people like Ana does, or he’s just so doped up on painkillers he can barely see five feet ahead of him. Wrapped in gauze with his right arm in a white sling, he stands near the crumbling fountain in the centre of the courtyard, watching the transporter’s thrusters burst to life in a rippling, burning, ring of blue.

A gust of bitter wind blasts her, and Angela tucks her datapad under her arm to feebly try to smooth her hair and keep her beret from joining the ship en route to Brussels. Her royal blue skirt billows around her; Gabe laughs at her when she hisses a curse.

“Two more sectors to go,” he tells her once the ship is high and disappearing into the heavy grey clouds, and his voice not lost to the rumbling engine. “Then we’ll do a final scout of the entire parameter. And then maybe we can get out of this hellhole.” Gabe’s smiling, at least, so Angela offers one of her own.

Anyone would think he merely suffered a tumble for how well he’s cleared up. Angela isn’t privy to the files, but she’s heard whispers, and her guess is that it wasn’t only the biopod’s magic that’s brought him back to life, nor whatever Moira has subjected to him over the last few months. She regards him a moment privately, from the corner of her eye as she taps into her pad. For all his smiles and his jokes and the way he loves Jesse, there’s something sad in all the little folds scrawled across his face, a heaviness in his grey eyes that’s almost overwhelming when confronted with it.

“I didn’t realise you missed Zurich so much, Commander,” Angela lilts, pulling up her map of the town. “Remind me when we get back, I’ll show you some of the castles and chapels.” 

Gabe snorts, and shakes his head. “Hah. I think if I stepped foot in a church it’d crumble down around me.” He shoots her a grin, and rubs his dodgy shoulder. “Still, it’ll be good to be back in a real bed. Especially when the old man’s rut hits.”

Angela almost chokes, but she breathes through her nose and focuses on tapping her screen. Perhaps the meds have muddled his propriety, too.

“What? You aren’t squeamish about that sort of thing. I know you, Doctor.” 

 _It’s not that,_ Angela wants to say. _You see the funny thing is--_

“Of course not,” Angela laughs, rolling her eyes.

Gabe squints at her, and there it is, that overbearing power in his eyes. It’s intimidating, almost; or it would be, to any one other than Angela. 

The stare lingers. Gabe sniffs. Rubs his nose and furrows his brow, and Angela swallows her hastily encroaching panic. 

“Angela,” Gabe says lowly.

She offers him a bland smile, eyebrows raised, but she gives herself away when her eyes fix on his nose and he sniffs once more. _Oh,_ she realises, mouth dry,  _oh, he can probably--_

“Doctor Ziegler, Overwatch’s paradigm of honor, of are you _getting some_? On a _mission_?” he asks incredulously. It takes Angela all her willpower to keep the blush on her throat from climbing to her cheeks. Gabe sniffs again, long this time, and he grins wickedly. “Who is it?”

Of course. He doesn’t know what Moira smells like, because she’s always suppressed. She didn’t even know howMoira smelt, until now.

His eyes slide from her around the courtyard, flicking from person to person, and Angela coughs awkwardly, tapping incessantly on her pad. She only pauses when Gabe gasps, and budges her with his good shoulder. 

“What?” 

Gabe nods behind himself, and with her curiosity getting the better of her Angela clears her throat, and casts a nonchalant glance around. There’s the usual crew, a few field agents stippled around--

And staring right for her is Captain Amari, with nurse Patterson flanking her and whispering hurriedly in her ear.

Angela whips around. Gabe’s grin splits his face.

“No.” 

“Then why is she _looking_ at you like she’s about to _eat_ you!”

Angela’s nostrils flare, her eyes pinprick. If she could even tell anyone about Moira, the commander would be the only person to not take it seriously. To laugh, and clap her on the back, and turn his eye to it all. Angela trusts him, dearly, and in turn he lets her wrangle his life back from the brink with her bare hands. Angela trusts him, but not with this. 

Ana stares at her, that lingering thing, hiding a thousand little thoughts. Angela flicks her glance to Patterson, all mousy hair and trembling frame inside her scrubs. Her eyes are downcast. Angela purses her lips.

Then she tells Gabe, “No doubt because I’m needed back at my post.” She offers him a consolatory shrug, and a small smile. “Promise I’ll tell you all the juicy details over tea back at headquarters.”

“Whatever,” Gabe grouses, slumping against the fountain. He mutters something under his breath but Angela’s denied the chance to catch it, because Ana is cocking her head behind her, towards the school. 

And it’s like everything is repeating itself, and a sick deja vu twists in Angela’s chest, where her heart is dropping with every heel-dragging step she takes. Her shoes click on the cobblestone and make her teeth rattle, and the only thought knocking about in her head is that she doesn’t want to be a part of this mess anymore. Ana waits for her to cross, and then all too quickly Angela is standing in front of the two women, and there’s no ignoring that gaze.

“Captain,” Angela greets pleasantly, pushing all her worries deep down. “Nurse Patterson.” 

Ana offers her a smile, a genuine one, and Angela almost lets her surprise show through. “Good afternoon, Doctor. Sorry to interrupt your,” Angela’s spared her watch for just a second as it fixes to Gabe and the way he stands, back to them, “conversation. Nurse Patterson was just giving me quick insight into how Dr O’Deorain’s performing since she recovered from her sudden bout of influenza.” 

“Oh?” Her heart does a silly little jump at the mention of her. She wills it to still. “And how is she?”

Angela thinks she imagines it but- no, something did twitch in Ana’s smile.

“Why don’t you tell her, nurse?”

Patterson seems to swallow a boulder when she clears her throat. She looks between Amari and Angela like she doesn’t know which one to please, least the other eat her alive. “Um,” she begins eloquently. Angela purses her lips, and pretends she doesn’t see Patterson sniff. “She-- Doctor O’Deorain has been impeccable, she’s cleared all her patients in record time, she’s been working all hours to do so. Only, it’s her bedside manner, Dr Ziegler.” 

Angela shrugs. “Moira’s always been crisp with patients.”

Ana cocks her chin. “But I can’t tolerate it when directed at other agents. Not only does it lower morale, it affects productivity. Which seems to exacerbate Dr O’Deorain’s condition.”

“I know how tired she is,” Patterson interjects placatingly, stepping forward, “I remember how tired you were, working triple shifts. We’re all exhausted, but Dr O’Deorain is always agitated, and lashes out in her anger. It’s as if there’s pins in her clothes, keeping her unsettled and on edge. And she mutters.”

“Is muttering illegal?” Angela asks dryly.

Patterson gives her a moment. “She talks about you.”

Oh.

Ana’s smile has dulled to something tight and empty. She sighs, and rocks back on her heels. Angela already knows what she’s going to say. She shuts her eyes. “Perhaps you should go speak to her, Dr Ziegler.”

“Yes,” Angela says quietly, tucking her datapad under her arm, and glancing up at the grey, empty sky. The transporter is long gone, perhaps halfway to Brussels by now. It’ll be back. “Thank you, nurse. I’ll go have a word.”

  
Dust.

(Ash, dirt, skin)  
  
Brick.  

(Clay, burn, _burning_ )

Clean. 

(Nothing) 

There’s nothing.

Except the tang of antiseptic, and the metallic, tacky heaviness of blood. Angela takes a steady breath through her nose; she winces. 

But there’s no Moira.

No forest in the middle of a warzone.

Going unnoticed Angela stands just to the side of the doorway to the gymnasium, and she watches, and she waits. Perhaps it’s because her scent is softened by the antibac or her layered clothes, perhaps Moira is simply too busy cleaning a scrape to sense her, but her hidden moment offers her a chance to gather her thoughts, form a plan. 

Confront Moira (professionally), inquire about her wellbeing, ask her what her issue is, devolve into a scene (unprofessional).

Confront Moira (professionally), offer to make her feel better, drop to her knees-- Angela bites her lip. Unprofessional. This whole dilemma has been, right from the very beginning. She watches Moira draw up to her full height once she’s satisfied with her bandage job, and offer the teenager perched on the cot before her a warm, small smile, and God, how she wants to climb her like a _tree_ and _make_ a scene.  

She envisions herself with her hands up the front of Moira’s turtleneck, and Moira picking her up under-thigh to press her against the nearest wall so she can roll her collar down with her teeth in order to-- 

“Oh, Dr Ziegler,” calls nurse Fitz, and it sounds much louder than it must be, but all the air in the infirmary goes frigid, and Moira’s back straightens as if her spine were strung by ice. “I’m glad you’re here. We just brought in about a dozen civilians from the west of town.”

Her eyes linger on Moira for a moment too long. Then she swallows. Fitz is watching her imploringly. 

“Any major injuries?”  
  
“No,” Fitz tells her on a sigh.  “Just dehydration, scrapes and cuts, the usual. Though between you and me, I think you’d best take over, anyway.” He flicks through his tablet, unbeknownst to the way Angela’s pursing her lips and staring him down.

“Oh?” Feigning ignorance feels like a weapon, and Angela feels childish, but not enough to stop. “Dr O’Deorain seems to have everything sorted.”

Fitz clicks his tongue, and glances up at her with a _look_ \-- it quickly quivers into something more professional when he realises Angela isn’t joking. “Dr O’Deorain only recovered from her flu two days ago. I only wonder if it’s safe for her to be around patients so soon.”

 _I’m sure._ “Well,” Angela decides, “she _is_ Overwatch’s head of medicine, and one of the world’s leading geneticists. But I’ll go check and make sure she doesn’t need some more ibuprofen.”

Fitz gapes at her, and splutters as he tries to string his sentence properly. But Angela doesn’t look at him, sidestepping him easily to stride across the room, her dusty red heels clipping against the scuffed wood. Moira keeps her back to her, has the entire time, but Angela knows that she senses her. She can see it in the lines of her shoulders, the angle of her head, slightly turned as if she’s listening for her.

Angela scowls. She won’t blame exhaustion, and she won’t blame Gabe’s insinuations for her horrid mood. For the first time in a long while she’s angry _for_ Moira and not just because of her. She’s mad that even now, even with a raging itch hiding just beneath her skin and as she buckles down and pushes through her rut, she’s continuously disrespected. From the strike team in the drop ship to the nurses at the base, there’s always a glimmer of deference in someone’s eye to catch, a sly downward twitch at the mouth when Moira's mentioned that Angela never misses.  

“Dr O’Deorain,” Angela says mildly, offering a short smile to the teen in the cot. “A word?”

She’s sick of it.

Moira purses her lips. “Can’t it wait?”

Her shoulder comes to Angela’s eyeline, still so rigid, she’s still so tense. Against the sides of her throat something glistens, but it isn't sweat. Angela glances back at the boy, gaunt looking and frail but alive, and then, almost indiscernible, and so very slightly, tilts her head.

“No, I’m afraid it can’t.”

Iron. 

(Blood, bones, burning steel)  
  
Antiseptic.

(Clean, clean _,_ and she is _so_ dirty)

Moira.

“Alright.” 

Every eye in the room is fixed to them. She knows this. She doesn’t care. She steps, so easily lining one foot in front of the other as she makes her way around the white cotton walls. It's as though the little bottle of wants she's kept plugged inside herself is slowly loosening, and everything she's ever suppressed raises its many heads. And Angela finds it so _easy_ to cross the red line on the end of the court, and to chase along the side of the bleachers, to that little door with the faulty hinge and the mildew gathering in the corner. And she finds that Moira stops when she stops, so close she can feel her hot, shallow breath against her neck, but different to the last time it was there. And when Angela pushes the door open and steps inside, into the leaking little change room, Moira follows.

It’s cold, and beneath her blue uniform goosebumps make her shiver. It’s wet, and it smells so poignantly of Moira that it makes a piece between her ribs ache. It’s like the classroom all over again, only this time Angela knows what to expect. 

Behind her Moira sighs, a tired thing, as if Angela’s some kind of child with whims Moira’s due to wrangle. “What’s this, Angela?”

Moira isn’t looking at her when she turns, or rather, she won’t. She remembers back to a week ago, in showers not unlike these. How interesting the tiles in this school must be.

She breathes through her nose. “Why did you come back? You’re still in rut,” she asks. 

Moira sighs again, and shuts her eyes. There's a subtle bulge in her trousers. “I’m fine. I’m really quite fine.” 

“No, you aren’t,” Angela laughs. It’s bitter. “Everyone is- do you know what everyone is _saying_?”

“Do you think I’m the type of person to _care_?” Moira mutters. “Let them hate me, I’m doing my work.”

“But you’re sick. You can't push yourself like this.” There’s something in her pulse that shoots through her veins like lightning, and all the little vessels beneath her skin fizzle and spark. She feels light. She feels _drunk._

Moira grits her teeth, and the hand passing over her face and wiping away her sweat is rough, twitching. “I said I’m fine.” 

 _What are you afraid of?_ Angela asks her once more. Moira’s hips are sharp and her waist small, and her hands settle on the bone and it feels like coming home. Her heels find themselves between Moira’s shoes. Then her stockinged knees find the slanted, cold tiles of the floor, and she doesn't notice when the damp soaks through.

“Angela.” 

It’s not a question. Not reprimanding, nor angry. Moira says her name like it’s some kind of shield, though one made of smoke. 

With her hands still holding her hips Angela looks up at her, tilting her chin. At this angle it's easier to see what's on the sides of Moira’s neck, just below her jaw. Something clear, shiny and viscous. The scent blocker, Angela realises with a twist in her gut. She flicks her eyes up to Moira’s furrowed brow, notes the wetness there, the way her cheeks are full of apple red and her hair limp, and she bites her lip. Moira’s sweating through the ointment.

“Angela,” Moira hisses, and she keeps her eyes screwed shut, just like the evening in the classroom, but her right hand finds the side of Angela’s face. Her fingers settle, one over her ear, two over her racing pulse.

“It’s okay,” Angela tells her gently, and she feels drunk, and this is dangerous, and they both know it because Moira’s scared, and so is she. “Let me make it okay.”

She feels drunk. She feels like she’s watching herself drag her hands down over Moira’s front from the other side of the showers, where the shadows grow and the pipes grumble. 

 _We shouldn’t be letting this happen,_ Moira tells her. 

 _We already have,_ thinks Angela. 

Her fingers pry apart Moira’s belt, til it’s loose and she can fumble with Moira’s fly. For all the commendation she’s received for her steady hands, her years doing her career proud suddenly leave her right where she is: kneeling on a bathroom floor in front of Moira fucking O’Deorain, lost somewhere in the middle of Belgium.

Moira keeps her eyes open now and she slumps back into the wall. And Angela smiles to herself, pleased and almost smug, and Moira’s thin, trembling hands twist into her flaxen hair.

And Angela opens her mouth. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! A very big thank you to everyone who read, commented, left kudos and subscribed! It made me so indescribably happy to see how well this was received and watch it be enjoyed!
> 
> And a big thank you to Faid <3 I'm so glad you especially loved this fic, and so it is only fitting that I kicked myself in the butt and updated it for you. Happy birthday babe!

* * *

 

 _He won't make love to me now_  
_Not now, I've set the fee_  
_He said it's too much in pound_  
_I guess I'm stuck with me_  
  
_He told me I was so small_  
_I told him "Water me_  
_I promise I can grow tall_  
_When making love is free"_  

“It’s not happening. We do this the way we said we would. Besides.” The lighter ignition hisses, the tobacco crinkles as she takes that first drag. “We’ve already got her involved.”

Her teeth are grit so tightly they creak. With her fingers steeped together and her elbows on her knees she can’t throw the dish next to her like she wants to, but maybe that’s for the best: Amari would definitely write her up then. Moira keeps her feet flat on the floor and stills her leg from jiggling anxiously, settles her burning eyes on Amari’s boots, dusty and brown.

“Captain, this isn’t a matter of pride any longer. It’s unfair to the mission, to our agents, to doct-”

“Then don’t fluff around like a teenager.” Ana waves her arm up by her head, and the glowing tip of her cigarette flares dangerously. “Get it over and done with and fuck her. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery, the last time I checked.”

“No,” Moira says, but it’s more to herself than anything. “I won’t. I can’t.”

She expects Ana to explode. Leant against a table with her legs crossed at the ankle and a wildness to her eyes that burns as hot as her cigarette, she’s been like this for the better part of an hour, unable to listen to reason. But instead of blowing up with hot air and bitter words Ana takes a long, hard drag on her smoke and stares her down.

She exhales, slowly, and asks, “why?”

Why? Part of Moira laughs. The other rubs her shaking hands over her sweaty face. Why. “Because I--” Love her? No, not love. Something else. Something worse. “Because if something were to go wrong, she’d never forgive me.”

Ana scoffs, and reaches into her coat. She tosses the crumpled pack of cigarettes onto the cot, next to Moira’s thigh. “Have you ever lost control before? You barely let more than three expressions cross your face on any given day, I find it hard to believe you’d knot and claim a pretty little omega the first time you fuck her.” Ana chuckles, eyes wistful, thumbing her cigarette. “She isn’t even on heat.”  

Something hot swells in Moira’s chest and her vision goes fuzzy, and her breath wet and shallow. She shakes her head, and scrunches her eyes shut. “Stop it.”

“Moira,” Ana sighs, smiling, and she might even be rolling her eyes but Moira won’t check. “Give up the ghost. Get over your rut, one way or another.”

“I’ll get through it, but you need to give me your scent blockers.”

“I already said I won’t. It’s a waste of resources, and they won’t give you any relief.”  
  
“It’ll give me relief to know that Angela doesn’t want my knot just because she’s on my scent.”

There’s silence in the dark room, lit only by two solar lamps in the corners and a small sonic heater by her ankle. Ana’s staring at her, her smug smile wiped from her lips, her cigarette whittling away.

“What do you mean by that?” she quietly asks. Fuck.

There’s a lump in Moira’s throat that wasn’t there a moment ago, so she lights a cigarette of her own with clumsy fingers, and watches the grey-blue smoke curl up in front of her. “She scented me. We scented each other. Only now, in hindsight, I’m worried.”

“Do you have true, rational reason to be?”

Moira purses her lips. “You should have seen her, Ana. It was like something else took over her completely, and I’ve seen my fair share of heats. This was different. This was… I made a mistake. I’m trying to fix it.”

“How close are you to getting over your rut?”

Moira takes a drag on her cigarette to avoid talking, but that only buys her a handful of seconds to think of a lie that isn’t more damning than the truth. She comes up with nothing. “Tonight was the first night that I… Well, it’s not as if I’ve been frantically rubbing myself off ever since my rut started, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Why not?” Ana’s frustration is palpable, and in this children’s room dampened with the smell of her come Moira feels pointedly smaller than she has in a very long time. She can almost hear Ana’s thoughts, and she waits for the venom, to be told _you’re not even trying_ and _it’s like you want to make this harder on Angela,_ neither of which are true.

“Because I couldn’t get her out of my head before this entire mess, and now it’s much worse.”

Desperation catches the edges of her voice. Moira lets it. 

“Angela Ziegler, of all people,” Ana only mutters to herself, and she rubs her eyes. “It’s a shame you two don’t get along better, or else you’d make a cute couple.”

This isn’t about hypotheticals. “Can you give me the blocker? And can you keep Angela away from me, before she does something we’ll all regret?”

Ana considers her for a good long moment. She thumbs the filter on her smoke a little, keeping her eyes trained on Moira long enough to make her itchy.

“Does she know?”

“Know what?”

Ana crushes the remnants of her cigarette beneath her boot, and she ruffles her coat. “Never mind. I’ll get you the scent blockers. You’ve got my permission to be back out in the field. But dealing with Angela is your responsibility.”

She fiddles with her earpiece quickly, and she flicks her wrist comm back online. Moira offers her the cigarettes but Ana waves her off. “You’ll need them.”

Then she walks out of the classroom, and Moira sighs on a lungful of smoke.

~

If a week ago Angela could have told herself that she’d be in this position she’d have laughed til she went sore. It all seems so long ago now, so far pushed back into the past by the events of the last few days that the memory of the very first time Ana came to her is hazy at the edges. Not that she can blame herself for her foggy memory, exactly, or for her inability to reconcile just how they ended up like this. After all, she has her right knee over Moira’s shoulder and her fist against her mouth, feebly attempting to trap the soft whimpers there.

The old office chair creaks precariously as Moira changes her position, wrapping her arms under Angela’s thighs to hoist her up, saving her neck from strain. Angela couldn’t care whichever way Moira wants to fold her, so long as her tongue doesn’t stop circling her clit _just like that,_ the way that makes stars burst behind her shut eyes.

Any other time Angela might be ashamed with herself, and embarrassed of the slick dripping down onto the harsh polyester of the chair and coating Moira’s face. If she’d known things might have culminated to this, she might’ve even shaved, just to make it a little easier for Moira. Though Moira doesn’t seem fazed, with her long fingers spreading Angela wide and exposing her completely the way they are.

It hasn’t even been a full twenty-four hours since Angela followed her into the showers, but in the time that has passed Moira hasn’t left her alone.

If Angela didn’t have the rod in her arm she knows she’d have gone into heat, based on her biological reaction to being around Moira. _That_ would have been fun to explain to Captain Amari, though she doesn’t know if this is any better, because at least that would have made sense. She hasn’t experienced _anything_ like this, not in heat, not in sex, and it’s as though something has picked through her brain and pilfered any understanding of her symptoms. Angela’s _thirsty,_ but not for water. Angela’s pulse hasn’t stopped hammering and her clothes feel too tight. Even if she has her skirt hiked up around her hips and her panties tangled in her kitten heels.

She should be worried. She should be more concerned than she is. But Moira’s making all those thoughts so far away and unreachable, and she’s making her feel so _good._  
  
When she comes it’s the third time in just an hour -- the only hour Moira can steal away from the infirmary -- and her trembling fingers thread Moira’s wine-stained hair to hold her still as she shudders and breaks against her mouth. Her eyes fall into Moira’s gaze: hot as blood, cold as deep waters. 

Moira pulls herself off so easily, as though Angela’s grip means nothing, as though she was never there by Angela’s will, and unhooks Angela’s leg and she drags herself over Angela, and her lips are wet and shiny and so is her face, from cheeks to chin. Down to her throat. Down to her collar. The more Angela looks the more mess she sees, and she should be ashamed, should be _disgusted--_

Moira leans down and presses her face to Angela’s neck. Right down into the junction of her shoulder. She feels lips. She can feel her breathing, inhaling, scenting.

She feels teeth.

“Moira.”

She looks down, feels cold, like she’s in too deep.

“Moira, you can’t.”

Angela knows she hasn’t been bitten, hasn’t been claimed. Though she doesn’t need a mark at this point to have evidence of this _something_ coalescing between them. Angela swallows, and she runs her hands over Moira’s back, her button down slick and stuck to her skin.  

Merely a graze of teeth is all, she tells herself. No more than a hickey.

Simply Moira's mind running on the rut, Angela thinks. Yes, that’s right, she assures herself, the rut is how they got here. The rut was what Amari asked her to end. She shifts, and pushes Moira off of her so she can get to the floor.

To her hands and knees.

This is getting out of hand. Time to end it.

Her skirt is still around her hips, panties on the floor, moonlight evaporating out the window in the wake of morning sun.

She can hear Moira’s rasping breaths behind her, and she can smell her scent, as though she has her face pressed to a soft and wet forest floor. She can feel Moira’s hunger; it permeates off her, rolling off of her in waves.

“Come on,” she whispers, and she lowers herself to her elbows, and then she lowers her chest to the scratched wood floor of the faculty office, keeps her palms flat beside her. She has to turn her head to the side to speak. “Let’s get this done with, yes?”

Moira makes the strangest of sounds, as though she holds a groan behind her clenched teeth. Angela can’t see her well enough but she can see movements, imagines Moira’s combing her hair back and wiping her face and looking anywhere but at Angela, presenting herself on the floor like an omega in heat.

So like Moira, to hold her barbed-wired stubbornness in an ever-tightening grip, than simply letting it go.

“Please,” Angela moans, “you’ve made me feel _so good._ Let me help.” 

“Angela.” Moira’s sweating, she’s shaking. Her eyes are heavy and wild and her neck is glistening. “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

And there’s that cloud again, dampening her mind, turning her mouth dry, parting her thighs to the point of ache. Her knees already hurt, bared to the floor, but there’s a want in her that’s unfamiliar and unwarranted. There’s a voice whispering in the shadows of her suppressed mind, her suppressed sex, only it isn’t begging for her own release. It’s begging for--

“I know what I’m doing,” Angela lies, “I know what I want. I want you.”

She wants to get this rut over with, she tells herself, _Ana_ tells her.

Moira swears in a hundred different languages and Angela hears more than feels when she kneels swiftly behind her. Moira holds her right ankle so tight it feels like her bones will snap and then she takes Angela’s skirt in a bunch in her fist. Something about Moira is changed, in the air around her, in her grip, something she never lets breach the surface of her countenance in public. It's biological. And the reaction Angela has to it is less something switching over inside Angela’s brain and more a shift of her entire state, like wood turning to ash in the wake of a fire.

She folds, eagerly, desperately.  
  
And Moira’s skin is so hot where her thighs are pressed to Angela.

And her belt’s undone, and her fly is open just enough.

When did that happen?

It doesn’t matter, Angela decides, and she keens, and presses her flushed cheek to the freezing floor.

She’s wet. She’s probably _glistening._ And she can _feel_ Moira’s gaze, she can feel two of her fingers passing over her sex, tracking through the slick, rubbing it on the inside of her thighs.

Angela frowns.

“I’m not fucking you,” Moira mutters, hazy and husky and far away, so far away, she may as well be off in the mountains. “I won’t. Won’t do that to you.”

She coats the inside of Angela’s thighs with her own slick and then Moira shifts forward, adjusts herself, and Angela can feel her, now, pressing between her legs.

Just up, a little more, Angela begs, yes, please, up up and inside.

“Hold your legs together,” Moira grunts. “I’m sorry. I’m…”

It’s almost unbearable. It’s almost like a heat. But a heat is the force behind an omega’s sexual wants, Angela reminds herself. This... this is different. “I want you inside me,” Angela slurs, drooling onto the floor, hair a golden fan around her ears. She keeps her palms down, in deference. “I want you to knot me.”

The breath Moira sucks though her teeth comes as a hiss and sounds as though Angela may as well have struck her.

“I’m of sound mind, you have my permission. I want you to do it. I _want_ you to use me.” 

Perhaps it’s simply her innate need to be needed. Guised as selflessness to pave the way for her medical career, whilst Angela has felt her patient’s pain and anger and hurt all too brutally and always sought to balm it, she knows there’s something beneath the mantle of her soul truly and simply being _good._ A lingering itch. An urge to be useful.

It’s not as though Moira chose her from a plethora of omegas to bed, but this doesn't feel any different to any time she’d held the cure to an ailment in her hand, than when she takes her needle and divine judgement and brings people back from the precipice.

She can make Moira feel _so good,_ only her.

“You have no idea what I’m like when I’m not in control. I don’t want you to find out.”

Moira’s hands move to the outside of Angela’s thighs and she pushes them together, and there’s another shift in this thing between them, and something adamant in Moira’s voice, so when she slides herself forward between the soft of Angela’s thighs Angela doesn’t say anything. She keeps her muscles taut and her legs together, her ankles locked, and she rocks as Moira moves, and she sighs when Moira brushes against her sensitive clit on an off-thrust.  
  
On every breath Angela can taste Moira. Every point their bodies touch burns, and with every thrust Moira’s language slips, her moans come louder, her accent thicker. Angela hasn’t been fucked like this before, and it makes something primal unlock in the space between her hips, sends her mewling, makes her say lewd things she’d never dream of saying aloud. Yes, fuck me, yes, knot me. Breed me. If Moira hears her she doesn’t say anything, at least not in English.  
  
Moira doesn’t last long. That isn’t unusual. She comes between Angela's thighs and it drips down to her knees, down to the floor, and it feels like lots but it shouldn’t be, no, not if Moira’s been getting herself off.

It’s hot. Moira’s panting, shaking, and Angela’s sure her eyes would be shut tight like that first time, if she could see her. She keeps position til Moira’s ready, even though there’s hair in her mouth. Even though the come sluicing down her legs is sticky, and itchy at the edges when it dries.

Some of it has smeared against her cunt. Angela almost chokes on her ragged breaths, because Moira’s _so close_ and so yet impossibly far.

She’s gone back behind her wall of glass, metres high and thicker than brick. Her hands are flat on Angela’s back, still twitching. Her breathing is harsh.

And Angela can feel her knot, small and hard and swelling. And suddenly it all feels so very real, and the haze clears, and the dream evaporates, and Moira O’Deorain just fucked her.

Doctor Moira O’Deorain. Head of genetics. Head of medicine. 

They share a laboratory, and too much anger.

They’ll have to go back to that, after this, after Belgium.

Only now they’ve shared bodies, too.

And it’s all starting to set in, what she’s done, that they can’t just politely excuse their actions and forget. She can’t forget this feeling. It’s like she’s been pumped with nanites that sway and bend to Moira’s every move. Her every heartbeat.

And yet despite the dread of when they’re back at Zurich and averting eye contact, Moira isn’t pulling away like Angela’s a burning fire ripping and warping her skin where they touch. She isn’t leaving. She’s staying. Her knot has fully formed, and Angela can feel her slowly coming again, lazy pulses that drip between her legs and muddle with her own slick, and if Moira were up up and inside she’d be filling her.

Maybe she could slip down, just a little, and catch the tip of Moira’s sex. If didn't have her implant, and if she was on heat, she’d sire a pup, a child, a prodigy. Something for them both to impart upon.

Moira rocks against her again, or rather sways. She’s rubbing the small of Angela’s back as though she’s giving a massage, and her hands are careful as they press down into her sore muscles, as they trace her spine. Angela can’t help but shiver; it’s been so long, too long, and no one’s touched her like this.

And that image of her taking Moira’s knot and Moira’s seed and Moira’s child comes back and flirts too much with the rational part of her mind, so when her comm link rattles against the floor next to her bedroll Angela sighs in relief, rather than irritation.

Moira jolts, as expected, and perhaps it’s good she isn’t inside Angela properly because simply imagining the way her knot would feel being pulled out of her when she hurriedly stands up aches.

It’s only an alarm, and Angela squints at the screen and flicks it away with a stiff finger. Five am. Time for Moira’s shift to end, and Angela’s to start.

“I’m sorry,” is what Moira eventually says to break the silence, and Angela doesn’t move, just listens, as Moira shuffles around the room til she finds what she wants, and crouches back behind Angela.

She pads a towel along the inside of her thighs, gently prying them apart. She runs it over Angela’s cunt, and she hisses, and tries not to get excited at the touch.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I shouldn’t have let this happen.”

“Moira.” She doesn’t hide the exasperation from her voice. “I’m much too tired for your own personal demons to be at war.”

Angela pushes herself off the floor and flattens her skirt the best she can in this state. “If everything was reversed and I went into heat you’d want to help me, wouldn’t you?”

“The stakes are much higher for you, Angela. It wouldn’t only be me wanting to ‘help’ you.”

Angela flashes her a dangerous look before she steps around her and to the side of the cot, pressed almost to the wall, but leaving just enough room for her case. She unzips it and flicks through her uniforms.

“If I went into heat on a mission, you’d help me,” Angela repeats, firm, and though Moira is more than a foot taller than her Angela’s glare cuts right through her. “You’d want to, because it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps not protocol, but sometimes the rules create problems rather than solve them.”

“But ask yourself why do you want to do this for me, Angela? Is it a conscious decision? Or nothing but your biological programming following its _protocol_ to an alpha in rut?”

Angela almost wants to scream through her teeth. She doesn’t, just stares incredulously. A vicious part of her wants to spit that no one else would have this many hang-ups about fucking her, but she knows that isn’t fair to say, though biting her tongue takes all her willpower. Instead she turns and strips off her clothes, uncaring to the startled, ridiculous noise Moira makes, ignoring the remnants of dried come still on her thighs. She pulls on her field trousers and her button up, she ties her hair in a bun at the base of her skull.  

Angela knows she should let her anger go, else it burn her. This is why they’re incompatible as bondmates, and as lab partners. They’re like the same end of a magnet; repulsive to each other’s overwhelming stubbornness.

For some reason her throat is tight around a rock that doesn’t exist. For some reason the edges of her eyes are stinging, her nose sore. Angela’s jaw is locked, nails cutting half-moons into her palms where her hands are fisted, down by her legs.

“I suppose you’re right. It must simply must be my designation. Nothing else.”

“Angela, be rational, this--”

She is. Moira can help herself now the worst of it is over. They’re moving out into the last section of the town today, and Angela’s comm pings in the quiet. She has a job to do, they both do, and it isn’t this.

“I have to go,” Angela tells her, because she feels she should. She swipes her comm and pockets it, and then she leaves the faculty office, and pretends she doesn’t feel she’s being pulled taut as she makes her way to the infirmary to take over shift.

 

“Nothing,” Gabe sighs, and he sounds _disappointed,_ of all things _._ Angela would frown, if she wasn’t already. “Are the maps up to date? There aren’t any side streets or alleys we missed?” 

“I can run the perimeter again, commander.”

Gabe shakes his head, glances out past Lena. “I’ll send the drones for a scout instead. I just can’t believe there was nothing in this sector. Not even a body.”

“It’s a small town,” Angela chimes in, “and we’ve been here nearly a fortnight.”

She gets a strange look she doesn’t deign to acknowledge. Gabe pulls up his map and comm link, and the two drones buzzing overhead ping with Gabe’s command before climbing high up into the air. Beside her the medics stifle yawns behind their gloves, Reinhardt stretches.  Lena rocks back and forth on her shoes, and tries to avoid Angela’s harsh eye. They all are. Everyone, except for Gabe.

He watches her slouch, shifting her weight to her hip, staring out past the buildings. Above the crumbling rooftops and shattered shingles mountains rise, blue, snow-topped giants that watch over the countryside. If she squints she can see the brown, abandoned castles that settle in the valleys where the mountains meet. Impossibly far away, it must be so quiet, so peaceful, so out of touch from this awful death-ridden world.

“Angela.” Gabe’s still watching her. He can probably smell her. She hasn’t showered, hasn’t had time between her shift in the emptied infirmary and now. At the base of her skull a headache blooms, dull but growing. Her skin is itchy and her lungs sting, but Angela knows a shower isn’t going to strip her of Moira O’Deorain.

Not even shame can. And she reeks of that, too.

“Angela, are you with us?”

“Yes.” She almost chokes on the word. She keeps her hands tight by her sides. She keeps her legs tight together. And then she hears Moira’s voice, her lilt, right by her ear-- “I’m fine.”

Gabe sighs. “Okay. I’m sending you back to the base. Vogel and Jarvinen can manage. Lena, go with her.”

“What? I said I’m fine.” She stares at him incredulously, at Lena and Reinhardt and the medics. “I’m fine.”

It isn’t up for debate. Gabe’s yellow eyes fix to her, trace her, every flyaway hair and every freckle glowing on her skin. He’s breathing steadily through his nose and when she realises he may as well be kicking her feet out from under her, because her world is spinning and there isn’t any more air in her lungs.

“Come on,” says Lena, and she steps up to her. “We’re all tired. The mission’s over. There’ll be work in the infirmary.”

But Gabe’s still staring at her, unknowingly breathing Moira’s scent which still clings to her. Angela can see him trying to figure it out. He opens his mouth to speak--

Lena takes her arm. “Come on, doctor Ziegler.”

Angela doesn’t fight her.

The walk isn’t far, less than a half hour at least, and Lena stays blessedly silent for most of it. Or until they’re far from anyone’s earshot and desperately alone, tracking their way back to the base. She can sense that Lena’s itching to fill the space with idle chatter and inane questions. The shifting blue light on her chest piece is distraction enough for Angela not to accidentally make eye contact with her, because she knows Lena is staring at her, too. What’s worse is that she’s pretending not to.

So it isn’t surprising when eventually she cracks. With a sigh Angela catches her gaze, on purpose, her eye sharp. “Just ask me.”

“I’m just wondering if you’re really alright, Ange,” Lena says, and it sounds so wilting, so patronising, that Angela almost laughs.

But she doesn’t. “What good does telling the truth do to anyone?”

“It does good to you.”

“Lena, I just don’t think you’d want to know.”

She pauses. She’s so very young, and Angela can see all the thoughts broadcast across her face as she plucks her words. As she chews them. When she says them she may as well be spitting, and Angela’s shiver might as well be a flinch. “Is it about doctor O’Deorain?”

“No.”

“Ange,” Lena pouts, bumping their shoulders. “I overheard Jesse grouching in the mess hall, is all. She hasn’t upset you too, has she?”

Angela does huff a laugh, then, and though she’s irritated, and though her skin is prickly and her clothes uncomfortable in all the wrong spots, she leans against Lena, gives her a smile. “I can handle Moira,” she lies, “don’t you worry about that.”

They’re silent a beat, simply the sound of their boots and the wind between them. Lena doesn’t let it last. “Someone said she’d gone into rut. It would account for her mood, though that sort of thing is hard to keep on the low, from what I’ve heard. Ange?”

She feels cold all over and sick, Angela feels sick. Angela feels like crawling into one of the crumpled buildings flanking them and never coming out.

“I’m fine.”

The suspicion lacing Lena’s voice and furrowing her brow makes her knees shake. It’s only Lena, her mind says, it’s her friend, but the judgement is too much for Angela to bear _._

“Shit, Ange.” Lena’s hand on her arm is what stops her from walking, grounds her. “Did you--”

“Lena, please. All you need to know is that it’s been sorted.”

“What do you mean? Did--”

“ _Lena,_ ” Angela begs, her jaw so tight her teeth feel moments from shattering. “Please.” 

Sometimes her probing goes too far. This isn’t one of those times, but Angela knows it might quickly delve into one, what with how excited Lena can get.

“It doesn’t need to become an issue for every agent to chew on. Moira and I are beings capable of choice, and sometimes those choices have no reason to be anything other than private.”

“But we all care about you.”

“Then you’ll respect my privacy.” _Our privacy,_ she almost slips and says, but it only seems as though it’d do more harm than good.

Lena hums. They’re nearing the base and if Angela focuses she can hear the other agents. “Can I at least ask when you’ll feel better?"

“That is indeterminable.”

“When will it be not-so-indeterminable?”

“When there’s enough evidence to say that Moira might love me back,” Angela admits softly.

“Oh. _Oh._ ” Lena stares out at the street, the flayed cobblestones and the pot-holes. “Well, that’s just grim, isn’t it?”

“This will all be forgotten once the mission is over. Til then I suppose I’ll simply… try to curb my moods.”

In another forty-eight hours they’ll be back in Zurich, and Angela will be in her quarters, in her own bed, with only her scent clinging to the sheets. If she’s selfish and in a mildly masochistic mood she could flicker through the memories of the almost-fortnight here, could play out scenarios stemming from those quiet nights by the fire in the recreational room. It’d hurt, but it’d fill the space on the side of her bed. Just til morning. Just for long enough.

“Well,” Lena says softly, and she links their arms, leans into her. “If you need anything, even if it’s just a chat, you know I’m always here.”

Angela smiles, squeezes her. “If I pick up any gossip you know you’ll be first to hear.”

It’s nice. Lena’s a nice girl, really, even though her smile flickers at the edges and she always has to be in motion, to keep those dreadful times when she isn’t at bay. She’s still volatile, and clings to her anchor with a white-knuckled grip. But she keeps her anxiety quashed down. She keeps her feet out of the limbo.

Perhaps Angela could learn something about how she does it.

The voices of the other agents are louder now, and as they round the corner and spill into the courtyard Angela takes in the sight before her; drop ships thrumming on the ground with their gangways stretching endlessly and their holds filled with equipment. Agents signal to one another over the humming engines. Angela watches as biopods, folded down and switched to stasis mode, are carried into the ships along with collapsed gurneys and cots.

Just like that, everything she’d worked so tirelessly over isn’t there anymore. No doubt the gymnasium only has one pod active, a mockup surgery, for any errant emergencies.

Ana Amari is standing by the fountain convening with Morrison. Her hair is sleek as oil and straight as a whip, her gloved hand is on Morrison’s shoulder.

They don’t notice her enter the square with Lena.

But across the way, standing in the farthest corner in the shadiest part of the courtyard is Moira, and her eyes are severe and glowing as she keeps the company of a cigarette.

“Come on,” prompts Lena when she falters.

But her feet don’t want to move, at least not in the direction Lena wants to take her. It’s as though her eyes won’t look anywhere else. Like she’s somehow magnetised to Moira. And dread fills her up, fear that if Lena tears her away her heart will stop.

Angela swallows. Moira holds a lungful of smoke before easily exhaling through her nose, and she stays watching her, stays impervious, like a challenge.

An image of herself on hands and knees in the centre of the square and naked to everyone fills her head. She could do it. She could get down on her belly and keen til Moira takes her, til Moira comes inside, til Moira claims the back of her neck. Public mating rituals have been illegal for nearly a century now, and the notion is a taboo, a fetish, practised only in smaller circles. But Angela bites her lip. She feels like she’s trapped in the sweltering depths of fever, with cold sweat beading against her brow and sluicing down her temple.

“Angela?” Lena sounds wary, distant. Her grip is tight on her arm, but she hardly notices. As though her vision has tunnelled, as though Moira has somehow woven her smoke into her lungs and into her veins, Angela hardly notices anything other than Moira at all.

“I have to go,” Angela blurts, and when she breaks her gaze Lena’s staring at her with something sour twisting her face, and a hissing voice in Angela’s head identifies the emotion as _disgust._ Of course it can’t be, of course it wouldn’t be, but it stings.

“Let me take you where you need to go,” Lena hurries to say, but Angela’s already crossing the courtyard and walking past both Ana and Jack and Moira, and she cuts into the school grounds into the lobby and leaves them all behind. She’s sure Lena gawks and scrambles after her, but Angela turns swiftly to the left, ducks into a corridor, finds the staircase with the large cracked window on the landing. Sunbeams dance in the afternoon light that streams through it.

Angela soldiers past and sends them spiralling.

She can hear the clip of Lena’s chronal accelerator zipping her through the hallways. She hears her call her name. And then she must flit down to where the gymnasium is buried, because then, eventually, there’s only silence.

 

The corridor is dusty.

The air in the room is stale.

But the cot is still pushed against the wall where Moira left it. Her scent, mingled with traces of cigarettes, still clings to the walls.

The door clicks shut softly behind Angela and she gives herself a minute to take in the carnage of the chairs and desks all still pushed to the side of the room. She glances to her left -- to the patch of wall where she had Moira backed. Where she had brought Moira off.

The cot yields when she sits on it, and while it’s hardly wide enough for one body to lay on it’s soft, and surprisingly not as threadbare as it could be. Spreading her fingers along the cotton fills her with a buzzy feeling that makes it hard to hear anything other than her heartbeat. Angela lets her fingers trace up to the pillow, which still has a dip in the middle, and loose strands of copper hair curling against the white.

Angela tells herself not to reach for them. Not if she wants to hold onto the remaining dregs of her integrity.

She folds her hands in her lap.

She waits.

And a hundred scenarios play on her mind, and a million different dialogues evolve behind her mouth, but the moment the door opens with a gentle _click_ it all leaves her. And the tightness in her chest is back, spreading with a vengeance to her belly, to her sex. 

It’s almost sickening how relieved she feels. How quickly all the anger she’s held onto today burns down to ash, to nothing. Eager to please and itchy beneath her skin Angela breathes through her nose, presses her knees together, lowers her gaze.

Waits.

Listens.

Listens to Moira hiss between her teeth.

Catches the heady scent of sweat and cigarettes on her skin. Gulps it down in lungfuls. Moira isn’t wearing the blocker anymore.

There's a beat, then a click -- the lock on the door.

Still she doesn’t look up. Won’t look up. This is what Moira wants to see, what the carnal part of Moira’s chest thrums to.

An omega, demure.

Her omega.

Her ma--

“I didn’t know you and agent Oxton were close.” Moira’s voice cuts like a blade, her words aloof and yet icy all at once.Accusatory.

“We aren’t,” Angela explains, keeping her tone from turning stubborn, “we’re familiar. We’ve been on missions before.”

“I thought today was the last day of fieldwork for you,” she says next. There’s a question there, hiding. _So why are you here instead of being out?_

Angela swallows. “Commander Reyes excused me from the scout."

“Why?”

“I wasn’t performing to standard.”

“Why not?”

When did her breathing become heavy? When did her knees slip apart? Her lips?

“I’ve been distracted.”

“By other alphas?” Moira huffs a laugh, but it’s bitter, and though Angela doesn’t look up entirely she can see her right hand clenched in a fist by her pant leg.

Angela would be offended. But there’s an insatiable need to please unfurling in her chest, and her head tilts just slightly to the side, and she keeps her voice gentle. “You know why.”

“Oh, so we’re back to this,” Moira says dully. She sounds almost disappointed. “You  _are_ still moving under the command of your instincts.”

“I’m acting on my own desires. On what I want.”

“And what is it that you want, Angela?”

She looks up. Moira’s chest is heaving, her eyes are wild, skin hot and pink. She’s wearing her button down and her slacks, and it’s opened at the collar. Low enough for Angela to see bone. Wide enough for Angela to see glistening sweat.

“I want to know what you were going to ask me, that night in the rec room.”

Moira replies too quickly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Biology’s habits are hard to break, you said. You asked me if I’d ever had a mate. I think you wanted me to say no.”

“What I want is irrelevant. I’m not good for you. I’m not healthy.”

“Because you’re older than me? Because your position is higher than mine?” Angela reaches back and pulls the tie keeping her short hair knotted behind her head. She pulls her cotton shirt up and off, keeps Moira’s gaze so that she can’t run away, not this time.

“Because what I feel is simply a by-product of biology.”

Angela cocks her head then, smiles, and she toes off her boots. “Why do you want to distance yourself from your designation so badly?” Her fingers work her belt loose, then her fly. She shimmies the coarse cargo pants down to her ankles, kicks them onto the floor.

Her skin prickles from the chill in the air. But the way Moira’s staring at her and drinking her in stokes the heat inside her.

“What are you afraid of, Moira?"

“I’m afraid of what I want to do to you.”

“I’m not,” Angela admits slowly, and she stands on doe-legs, and she pads to Moira, to hold her wrist, her neck. “There’s something in me that wants you, Moira. I can’t have peace til I satiate it.”

Moira’s pulse is thrumming, her skin slick. Her eyes are red and blue and sad, she shuts them. Angela backs herself the cot and crawls down onto it, to her hands and knees, and she presses her face to the cotton.

“Please, Moira, I can’t get you out of my head. I can always feel your hands on me, no matter how far apart we are. I want you to fix it. I want you inside me.”

Moira only shakes her head, smiles without it reaching her eyes, runs a hand through her tousled copper hair. She murmurs something about Ana, about biology, about Angela.

She kicks off her shoes and she works her belt loose, untucking her shirt so she can pull her trousers off. She leaves her blouse on, but pops another button, and Angela can spy the milky expanse of her chest when she bends down in front of her.

“Not like this.” Moira’s voice is husky, her throat gravelly. “On your back.”

It’s like her neurons are somehow hardwired to Moira’s every will. Angela rolls over carefully in the tiny cot, and parts her thighs to let Moira kneel between them.

She isn’t wearing her underwear, but Angela doesn’t get the chance to look at her properly before Moira is leaning down and pressing her nose to the side of Angela’s cheek.

She turns and faces the wall without being told. Moira moans, from her scent or from her eagerness Angela can’t tell. But her nose is there, pressing against her fluttering pulse, and her teeth are back, grazing against her skin.  
  
"You smell so sweet."

But never breaking it. No, that’d make this real. That’d be irreversible.  
  
"Like fruit, like oranges. That's your scent."

Though isn’t even toying with the idea just as detrimental?

“Please, Moira.” When did her voice turn so small? A pulse of slick drips from her and soaks her panties and Angela whimpers, brings her hands to Moira’s chest. She can feel her breasts, small, filling her hands and soft.

With one hand Moira traces down Angela’s side and across her soft belly to flirt her fingers with the hem of her underwear, and she doesn’t wait, doesn’t tease, just pushes them down til she needs Angela to wriggle the rest of the way out. Her freezing fingers waste no time in finding Angela’s core, and she slides through her wet, spreads it over her clit, her entrance.

Two fingers slip in, easy and fluid, down to Moira’s knuckle, and they both moan. It isn’t enough, even when she gently fucks her, and presses in all the right spots. Even when she creeps kiss after kiss into her throat.

Angela lets her own hand join Moira’s down between her legs before she reaches for Moira, and she’s already achingly hard in her hand. The wall behind Moira’s right shoulder catches her eye and Angela remembers the very first time, how Moira had whimpered, how she’d held her as she came, how warm she was.

And there’s a warmth that opens up in Angela’s chest now as she watches Moira’s face. Her eyes are shut, but her mouth is open, and she looks so much younger like this. The furrow to her brow has lifted and her skin is glowing, a blush illuminating a galaxy of dim freckles all over her skin. Her hair is falling forward and curling against her forehead and Angela has to resist the need to comb it back.

She grips her arm instead. And she cants her hips upwards and Moira brushes against her thigh.

“Please.” Angela hopes if she opens her eyes wide and lets her lips open, her tongue pink behind her teeth, it’ll be enough. She’s so close, Moira’s so close, and her harsh breaths are hot over her face, she’s shaking, gradually falling apart.

“Angela, if we,” a swallow, Angela knows her slick is running down to Moira’s wrist, “I won’t stop. You can’t ask me to.”

She can’t hide the way her pupils dilate or her breath quickens, not from Moira, and she doesn’t pretend Moira can’t feel how she’s fluttering against her fingers. “That won’t be an issue.”

“And you can’t hate me, afterwards.” Moira doesn’t open her eyes. She’s back to that fractured thing, moments from breaking. “Please.”

It seems strange that the notion hasn’t crossed her mind yet. After all they’d done, and suffering the blender of emotions she’s felt for the woman, Angela doesn’t know why she hasn’t considered doing it before. But she does now, because it seems right, because it’s what they need. What Moira needs.

And that’s what this has all been about, right?

Angela leans up and it’s a gentle thing, soft enough to almost not exist. But she presses her lips to Moira’s, which are hot and sore from being worried, and Moira makes a strange sound Angela can’t place and she pulls her fingers out if only so she can replace them with something infinitely better.

One swift, easy motion, as though Angela was made for her.

Their heights are awkward but Moira takes her hips and lifts her just so, and Angela finally threads her fingers through that messy hair. In the afternoon sun it almost looks gold, and her skin shines, and despite the autumn chill Angela feels almost unbearably hot.

For a moment they’re still. For a moment it’s just their breathing and their shaking and Moira’s Gaelic, which Angela doesn’t understand much of. Though she thinks she doesn’t need to.  
  
When Moira moves Angela feels it, she feels it everywhere: every branch in her lungs to every strand of hair. Electricity jolts beneath her skin and chases her veins and she lets Moira know, and that only turns the grip on her sides hard and her thrusting errant. Moira _keens_ into her neck and when Angela shuts her eyes a swarm of memories are dredged from the corners and shelves of her mind. Moira, too tall for Ana’s office. Moira, stooped over an exam table and paying no attention to the pain in her back in lieu of saving the life beneath her. Moira, sitting by the fire, delicately open and vulnerable and breakable.

The cot squeaks behind Moira’s grunts, Angela’s laboured breathing. She knows they’re far from earshot. Even if she strains she can’t hear the agents from the courtyard, and thankfully doesn’t hear Lena’s voice or the sound of her zipping through time. So she lets herself be loud, lets herself enjoy Moira’s sounds without the anxiety of being discovered.

“You can be rough,” she murmurs. The skin of Moira’s neck is pale and teasing and Angela’s jaw aches for a reason she can place. So instead while her mouth is this close anyway Angela leans up and catches Moira’s ear in her teeth and puts the feeling to the back of her mind. “I’ve got you.”

Maybe it’s her words. Maybe she’s just close. But Moira shudders and presses her face to her neck, and her teeth are so, _so_ close to her skin, and Angela feels herself slicking, over and over and over. She isn’t even in heat, couldn’t be even if she wanted, but it feels something like that.  
  
Moira’s as deep inside her as she can be, their bodies flush, her hips pistoning. It’s primal. And thinking about it is what makes Angela’s left hand creep down to her clit, and with two fingers and the small space between Moira’s belly and hers she works herself with little build up, just harsh and fast and firm. But it isn’t enough and with open eyes she scans Moira’s body, hunched over hers and taking her almost on instinct. She’s certain the cot will need to be destroyed after this what with how she’s leaking, and it’s a good thing Moira took off her trousers to save them being stained. And it’s that thought, like she finally hit an itch in the centre of her back, that she catches.

“Moira.” Angela’s voice is thin and reedy and she feels hot, so hot, everywhere. “Come inside me, please?”

“I won’t get pregnant,” she hurries to say when Moira goes to protest, when she shifts and it feels like she might even pull out entirely, “I’ve got a rod. So you can come inside me, I want you to.”

Moira makes a sound like she’s in pain, and her hips work twice as fast, the hands holding her hips tight enough to bruise. “You can’t say things like that.”  
  
“Do you like it when I do?”

And there’s that noise again, and Angela has to fight not to grin. “Would you still take me without contraception? Would you risk it even if there was a chance I would sire pups?”

“Don’t, Angela."

And then it hits her. And the tightly coiled thing in her belly threatens to snap. “That’s what you want, though, isn’t it?” she pants, and it’s as though Moira is scratching an incurable itch, like she’s offering her water in the middle of an oasis. “That was your question.”

Moira’s breathing is erratic and heavy and her thrusts turn sloppy. She pulls back but only slightly, ripping herself from Angela’s scent, steeling herself.

“It’s okay,” Angela whispers, her fingers slipping back to her clit to work herself over the edge. “You’re allowed to want me. You’re allowed to have me.”

The haze drops over her eyes. Opaque satin that smells like wet wood and dirt and plants and trees and something so very, very far away from all this. The coil in her belly tightens and it almost _hurts_ how close she is, because she's still not close enough.

“I’m not going to last long,” Moira warns her, as if doing so is part of the some formal etiquette of breeding one’s colleague, and it seems almost obsolete now, when they’re this far into things. Still something spikes in Angela, something that says yes, finally, yes, just a bit more.

“I’ve got you.” She pulls her hand off from her clit, settles it on Moira’s shoulder instead, because that isn’t what _she_ needs. She doesn’t need to come. That isn’t the urge. “I’m yours. I’m only yours.”

It isn’t like before, a week ago against the wall, with her knees on the damp, freezing tiles of the bathroom. It isn’t like how she imagined. When Moira peaks she’s whispering in Gaelic with one hand fisted in Angela’s golden hair and her hips still working, still fucking, still moving hard and fast and reverently. With a strange feeling in her ribs Angela realises that the warmth in her core isn’t her own slick producing but Moira’s come, filling her up entirely and dripping back out down to the cot. It seems like a lot, it seems like too much, but then Angela reasons she’s never been fucked by an alpha in rut.

At some point the Gaelic phases into Angela’s name, over and over and over, and Moira’s never sounded like this before. She’s never called her like this. Been open like this.

Like a bared and naked nerve.

Her hips are still moving. Her grip unrelenting. She’s still coming.

And Angela can feel it, then, and it feels so much different to when Moira was between her legs, so much better.

Moira’s still deeply sheathed inside her when her knot pops and it’s then that she starts to slow down, but only slightly. And she’s still panting, and whispering her name, and shaking.

And her neck is there, teasing, shiny with sweat and her overpowering scent, uninhibited without Ana's blocker.

Something clicks.

That’s it.

Angela arches upwards.

And her lips are wet and shiny with spit.

And Moira’s skin is so hot.

She tastes so sweet.

She yields so easily.

And.

Angela.

Bites. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to scar.

And Moira moans so loudly, it fills the room. She doesn’t sound like she’s in pain. She doesn’t even sound human.

Sated. Finally. The fire extinguished. The thirst quenched.

And then Angela opens her eyes again and she can see again, smell and hear and taste.

She tastes blood. Instantly breaks away and pushes herself back down into the cot and stares up at Moira’s glassy eyes with her own. Adrenaline thrums in her veins and she wants to run. She wants to run down the corridor and down the stairs and as far away from Moira O’Deorain as she can get.

But she can’t. Moira’s still inside her. Her knot is too swollen and they’re tied--

“What,” Moira rasps, her whole body shaking, “what did you just do?”

It’s obvious what she did. There’s an angry red bite marking the junction of her neck and shoulder, stippled with a ring of teeth marks, all raw and shiny with spit and beading blood. Angela swallows against her rising panic. It doesn’t help.

“I-" her fingers claw against Moira’s arms, and she can feel her knot inside her, her come hot and heavy low in her belly, “it just felt right.”

That’s what’s worrying her.

Moira stares down at her for what seems like an age, her eyes wide and incredulous and searching, searching for a better answer than that. Perhaps Angela should have lied and said instead that she was only carried away, and it’s only a hickey. Just a little love bite, a token of good sex.

She wants to tell Moira that it isn’t a bond mark, but for some reason her mouth won’t cooperate, and the words won’t come out. She wants to talk her way out of it, before everything unravels, before Moira leaves.

“I’m sorry,” is all Angela can think to blurt, and when did she start to shake, and when did her eyes start to sting. “I’m- I-”

Angela’s known Moira’s anger. Seldom is she on the other side of it; no, that’s different. That’s frustration fanning the flames of fight. But she’s seen her tip her desk on its side in fury, she’s heard her demolish a person using only her words. Angela’s knows how much that thin frame can hold inside it, before it starts to spill out.

“Moira-”

Angela knows what her anger looks like, tastes of. But she’s never seen her swallow it back down. She’s never seen her blink it away, breathe it away, to dissipate and dissolve.

“It’s alright,” Moira simply says. Calm. Neutral. “It’s alright.”

And she waits, unable to breathe, for Moira to change her mind, for it to not be alright. For the regret. For the indignation.

An omega, marking and claiming an alpha.

The embarrassment of that. 

Moira’s elbows meet the sides of the cot and she lowers herself, gently settles her weight so as to not crush Angela’s rapidly rising chest. “Calm down,” she murmurs softly, smiling, though Angela is anything but, “there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“I bit you!” Angela can feel herself creeping towards hysteria, even though she really needn’t. “You’re-  I bonded us-”

Moira hushes her. Her fingers card through all the tangles in Angela’s hair and Angela feels her long nose pressing to her temple. “Calm yourself. I don’t think this is what bonded us, Angela. But I do believe this has sealed it.

“Listen,” Moira goes onto say when Angela’s throat turns too tight to speak, and her fingers keep moving, and Angela can feel her come still shooting inside her, pulse after pulse, “we’ll figure this out. Later. Not now. Now, you should relax. My knot shouldn’t be long.”

And then we’ll fix this. We’ll rectify it. Things will go back to how they were before.

It goes unsaid but Angela’s mind rattles with the thoughts.

And she feels at war with herself, because she doesn’t want that, never wanted that, and if Moira regrets this then it’ll shatter her, instead.

It’ll shatter her.

 

Angela’s hands are shaking.

A slight tremor, attributed to the chill in the air if anyone were to see. As it stands nobody is still enough to pay her any mind, least of all the way she holds the cases of medical equipment, which quiver in her white-knuckled grip. The courtyard is a flurry of activity, of agents running to and from the carrier’s gangway, Ana focused as she calls orders from the side and marks her checklist.

For once she isn’t watching her. It should feel like a weight off of her back, but for some odd reason Angela craves the reassurance. Like Amari is some guardian keeping track of her every move, in order to prevent her from making the wrong one.

The wrong one. Too bad Angela didn’t invite her to watch Moira fuck her.

She feels the metal creak in her hands. Wills herself still, and takes a calming breath. What had she worried over before? That this wouldn’t change anything.

And like a scientist with any hypothesis she’d tested it and proven herself right. Nothing was different.

If there’s one solace, Angela thinks as she shunts into the carrier’s belly and stacks the cases to the left, with the rest of medical’s gear, it’s that she isn’t the one with the mark. She doesn’t have to button her collars and keep her eyes averted when she sees herself in the mirror. She won’t be the one with the obvious reminder.

But when it’s midnight and her bed is empty, she’ll still feel an itch in her lungs, a tightness in her belly.

When she goes into heat she’ll never be sated. She’ll still be sore, vulnerable and open, like a wound without a suture.

Thankfully she hasn’t seen Lena since yesterday when she lost her in the corridors of the school. She’s out running the perimeter with Gabriel, or so Angela assumes, but it’s only a matter of time til she’s hunted her down and ran her questions, questions Angela really doesn’t want to answer.

And thank the stars she hasn’t seen Moira, either. Not since she pulled out of her and pulled her trousers on, and together they cleared the classroom of their presence, and together they walked back to the faculty office, to their own beds. In the morning her cot was packed away, her suitcase gone.

For the best, Angela tells herself, drifting down the gangway and across the warped cobble. Because she knows how Moira gets, how those impervious walls around her grow. Angela doubts she could get behind them now, doesn’t even know if she wants to.

There’s a pile of equipment in the foyer that needs to be carted and that’s a fine enough distraction for now. Mindless labor, everyone is tired, and no one wants to talk. So Angela keeps herself busy and her eyes lowered, keeps her grip firm, keeps shaking despite herself.

By the time the midday sun has crested and begun to sunk the school is cleared. Gabriel and Lena have made it back, though they leave her blessedly alone. Perhaps it’s due to the grey beneath her eyes and the ashy tone to her skin.

Or maybe it’s because Amari has finally sidled up to her in the ship, trapping her between a stack of crates and the exit.

Angela waits for the admonition, teeth clenched and eyes stinging. “What?” she snarks, when Amari only stays silent. “I did what you asked. Though it doesn’t matter. The mission’s over now, anyhow.”

Ana ignores her tone, ducks her head all the better to see her face. She isn’t mad. “Are you alright?”

“I have to be.”

“You’re allowed to not be. No one will think you’re weaker for it, I can assure you.”

“But I shouldn’t be.” Angela clenches and looses her fists as her sides, tries as hard as she can to keep the waver from her voice. “I shouldn’t feel the way I do. I shouldn’t have--”

Does Ana know? Probably. Ana knows everything.

“You weren’t even meant to find out to begin with,” Ana says dryly, but Angela thinks she might be smiling. “If anything, _I_ shouldn’t have done a great many things. But it’s happened now. And we can’t change what’s happened, just how we feel about it.”

How Angela feels. She feels lonely. Like she’s the last person on the entire planet, like she’s missing something vital to her parts.

“What am I meant to do, Ana?” She’s still shaking. She’s still sore. “She wants to fix things. But I don’t. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I was doing, the entire time.”

When she looks up Ana is watching her sheepishly. When she looks up, she finally feels her nerves settle, just slightly. “I knew, Ana. So you can add that to the incident report.”

“Why don’t you talk with her? Just...talk. You might be surprised to find you have a lot more in common than you think.”

“What, regarding a similar taste in field sports?”

Ana arches an eyebrow. “Regarding your mutually overlooked feelings for one another.”

There’s that lump, back in her throat. Angela blinks dumbly, watches two agents carting something between them in a wooden crate. They don’t look up from their task. Ana doesn’t look away from her.

“It’s a short flight back. But there’s always places at base for you to relax, unwind. The rec room in the residential wing, for instance.”

Ana clears her throat gently, when she doesn’t reply. “Come on. I’ll have someone move the rest of this. You get on the next flight out to headquarters.”

Any other time she might have argued and pushed to work, might have longed for the distraction, but Angela only sniffs, nods, welcomes Ana’s reassuring pat to her shoulder as she sidles past and down the ramp. The drop ship is idling fifty yards away, and keeping her eyes low, and her arms around her waist tight, Angela makes her way over.

Her luggage is already on board, along with her tech, so she climbs aboard and shuffles down the centre aisle without thinking. Her mind is foggy, eyes hazy, but she finds a seat up the back, falls into it.

She can hear Jesse, somewhere towards the front. Angela shuts her sore eyes, leans into her hand, tries to forget.

Her stomach feels empty.

Her heart twists.

A gentle hand comes to her shoulder, somewhere above her she hears a throat clear.

“They aren’t taking off for another hour.” God, has her voice always sounded like that? “Do you mind if I sit here, regardless?”

Bosky, veiled with the scent of cigarettes, laced with the tang of fresh fruit. Angela breathes through her nose, closes her eyes, and when she opens them again everything feels clear and right and Moira is standing there, right there, right next to her.

Her hand doesn’t move. The collar to her button down is open.

“Of course,” Angela croaks. When Moira’s hand drifts and she curls a tress of her hair behind her ear, she lets her.

When she stoops down, Angela stretches to meet her.


End file.
